subject:"Re\: Continuous Game of Life"

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 21 Oct 2012, at 18:42, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Hi John,

 On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote:

 Bruno,
 especially in my identification as responding to relations.
 Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of
 thinking, more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we have no
 idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE
 identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether
 she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course).


 My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self-consciousness,
 as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to the ability to build a
 representation of one self. Then I have enlarged the spectrum up to some
 spiders and the octopi, just by reading a lot about them, looking video.

 But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say I
 know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to
 different scalings.

 The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different reason
 (the main one is that it is Turing Universal):

 x + 0 = x
 x + s(y) = s(x + y)

  x *0 = 0
  x*s(y) = x*y + x

 But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that if a
 property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor operation, then
 it is true for all natural numbers. That is the infinity of axioms:

 (F(0)  Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x),

 with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus
 defined with 0, s, +, *),

 Then you get Löbianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you and
 me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can develop maximal
 awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics retrievable by that
 theology, and the observation and inference on their most probable
 neighborhoods.

 Löbianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create and
 enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold.



 Bruno,

 Might there be still other axioms (which we are not aware of, or at least
 do not use) that could lead to even higher states of consciousness than we
 presently have?



 Yes, there are interesting transfinities below and beyond omega_1^CK (the
 Kleene Church first non constructive ordinal). This has plausibly, with
 comp, some relation with possible consciousness states (but that is not
 obvious and depends on definitions).




 Also, it isn't quite clear to me how something needs to be added to Turing
 universality to expand the capabilities of consciousness, if all
 consciousness is the result of computation.



 Gosh! It is only recent, for me, that I even think that universal machines
 are already conscious. I thought Lôbianity was needed. But then it is
 basically the same as the consciousness--self-consciousness type of
 consciousness enrichment/delusion.  In a sense, abstract universality is
 maximally conscious, maximally undeluded, or awake, somehow.


This is not quite what I meant (I remain undecided on your proposition that
all Turing machines are conscious).  What I meant is that any Turing
machine could perform any computation, so if all conscious states are the
result of computation, then all that is needed to produce that conscious
state is any Turing machine (running the appropriate computation).
Therefore, if computation is all that is needed, why do different axioms
have to come into it?  Why is an induction axiom needed for human
consciousness?



 But Turing universality is cheap and concerns an ability to imitate other
 machine, not to understand them, so for provability and beliefs, and
 knowledge there are transfinite improvement and enlargement possible.
 We are not just conscious, we differentiate in developing beliefs, and get
 greater and greater view on truth.



I can see how different axioms are needed to justify different beliefs, but
it isn't so clear to me how they are needed for different conscious
states.  Unless we are talking about conscious states like of believing 7
is prime because of some other axioms.




 It is like you might be near doing a kind of  Searle error perhaps. A
 computation can emulate consciousness, but the computation is not
 conscious, only the person emulated by that computations, she can always
 progress infinitely (even if restricted on the search of arithmetical
 truth), develop more and more beliefs and knowledge. Particular universal
 machines will develop particular parts (even if transfinite) of
 arithmetical truth.

 But G and G*, that is the modal logic of the provability of the Löbian
 machines, is a treshold. Despite growing transfinitely on her knowledge(s)
 of the arithmetical truth, as long as they remain self-referentially
 correct, they will obey to G and G*, for their theory of provability. If
 consistent, they will for ever

Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote

  I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed after
 watching the movie The Prestige


 In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10 years,
 and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the
 book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had
 somewhat similar themes, this is part of it:

  About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It
 could  find the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the
 limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to
 construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of a second and without
 harming the original in any way. You may be surprised that I was able to
 build such a complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good
 I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all
 the latest tools from Sears.

 I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating
 myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with
 smoke (damn those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and
 then 3 feet to my left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that
 instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I
 yelled This is monstrous, there can only be one of me, my copy yelled
 exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached
 for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think I'm
 strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the double
 also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted you don't have the
 guts to pull the trigger, but I do. Again he mimicked my words and did so
 in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the
 trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum
 fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.

 Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some
 pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really
 torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as
 before, but would a copy feel different? Actually there is a way to be
 certain, I have a video tape of the entire experiment. My memory is  that
 the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he
 appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things would have been more
 symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original
 walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT,
 then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape,
 should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I
 should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am
 the copy would that mean that I have no real past and my life is
 meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn the tape and forget all
 about it?


Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard
it):

You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will
be given a gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and
everything will be fine.  Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be
allowed to leave the room and will be given $1,000,000.  What do you do?
If you value the money and ascribe to certain philosophical schools, the
logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone.



  you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that
 you identify with.


 I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are produced
 by some activity of your brain.


 Yes.

  Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered,
 even if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in
 principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back
 just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.


 Yes.


  Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the
 same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are
 functionally equivalent.


 Yes.

  We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with
 atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right
 where it left off (from before you were obliterated).


 Yes.


 It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we
 paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed
 it.  From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your
 physical incarnation and location has changed.


 Yes.


  what happens to your consciousness when duplicated?


 When what is duplicated? Adjectives, like

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-24 Thread meekerdb


On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com 
mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com
mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com wrote

 I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed 
after
watching the movie The Prestige 



In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10 years, 
and this
is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the book. 
Before the
movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had somewhat similar 
themes, this
is part of it:

 About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It 
could  find
the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the limit 
imposed by
Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to construct a copy and it 
does it
all in a fraction of a second and without harming the original in any way. 
You may
be surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but you 
wouldn't
be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply 
lovely
and I have all the latest tools from Sears.

I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating 
myself. The
day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with smoke (damn 
those
radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet to my 
left was
a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the full 
realization
of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled This is monstrous, there can 
only be
one of me, my copy yelled exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying 
to mock
me, so I reached for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why 
people
think I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the 
double
also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted you don't have the 
guts to
pull the trigger, but I do. Again he mimicked my words and did so in 
perfect
synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the trigger, he 
did too.
My gun went off but due to a random quantum fluctuation his gun jammed. I 
buried him
in my back yard.

Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some 
pangs of
guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really torments 
me. How
do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as before, but would a 
copy feel
different? Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape of 
the entire
experiment. My memory is  that the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, 
(if I had
arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things 
would have
been more symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the 
original
walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT, 
then I
would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape, should I 
be? If I
found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I should morn the 
death of John
Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am the copy would that mean that I 
have no
real past and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or should I just 
burn the
tape and forget all about it?


Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard it):

You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will be given a 
gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and everything will be fine.  Or, 
if you shoot yourself your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be given 
$1,000,000.  What do you do?  If you value the money and ascribe to certain 
philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than 
shooting the clone.



 you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness 
that you
identify with.


I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

 You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are 
produced by some
activity of your brain.


Yes.

 Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, 
even if
every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in 
principle you
could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just right, 
you will
be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.


Yes.

 Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the 
same
atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are 
functionally
equivalent.


Yes.

 We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together 
with atoms
from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right where 
it left
off (from before you were obliterated).

Re: Continuous Game of Life




On Oct 24, 2012, at 9:02 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com  
wrote:
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com  
wrote


 I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I  
noticed after watching the movie The Prestige


In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10  
years, and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was  
better than the book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short  
scenario that had somewhat similar themes, this is part of it:


 About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine.  
It could  find the position and velocity of every atom in a human  
being to the limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this  
information to construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of  
a second and without harming the original in any way. You may be  
surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but  
you wouldn't be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The  
birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all the latest tools  
from Sears.


I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by  
duplicating myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the  
chamber, it filled with smoke (damn those radio shack transformers)  
there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet to my left was a man  
who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the full  
realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled This is  
monstrous, there can only be one of me, my copy yelled exactly the  
same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached for my  
44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think  
I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that  
the double also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted  
you don't have   the guts to pull the trigger, but I  
do. Again he mimicked my words and did so in perfect  
synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the  
trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum  
fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.


Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had   
some pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not  
what really torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel  
exactly the same as before, but would a copy feel different?  
Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape of the  
entire experiment. My memory is  that the copy first appeared 3  
feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in  
front of me face to face things would have been more symmetrical,  
like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original walking  
into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT,  
then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the  
tape, should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do?  
I suppose I should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm  
not dead. If I am the copy would that mean that I have no real past  
and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn  
the tape and forget all about it?


Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I  
heard it):


You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and  
you will be given a gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave  
that room and everything will be fine.  Or, if you shoot yourself  
your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be given  
$1,000,000.  What do you do?  If you value the money and ascribe to  
certain philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to  
shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone.



 you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/ 
consciousness that you identify with.


I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

   You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are  
produced by some activity of your brain.


Yes.

 Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you  
suffered, even if every atom in your body were  
separated from every other atom, in principle you could be put back  
together, and if the atoms are put back just right, you will be  
removed and alive and well, and conscious again.


Yes.

 Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use  
the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and  
isotopes are functionally equivalent.


Yes.

 We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back  
together with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness  
would continue right where it left off (from before you were  
obliterated).


Yes.

It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM,  
we paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and  
then resumed it.

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-24 Thread meekerdb


On 10/24/2012 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Oct 24, 2012, at 9:02 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:



On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com 
mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com
mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com wrote

 I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed 
after
watching the movie The Prestige 



In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10 years, 
and this
is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the book. 
Before
the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had somewhat similar 
themes,
this is part of it:

 About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It 
could  find
the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the limit 
imposed by
Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to construct a copy and it 
does it
all in a fraction of a second and without harming the original in any way. 
You may
be surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but you 
wouldn't
be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply 
lovely
and I have all the latest tools from Sears.

I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating 
myself.
The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with smoke 
(damn
those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet 
to my
left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the 
full
realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled This is 
monstrous, there
can only be one of me, my copy yelled exactly the same thing. I thought he 
was
trying to mock me, so I reached for my 44 magnum that I always carry with 
me (I
wonder why people think I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted 
with
alarm that the double also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted 
you
don't have the guts to pull the trigger, but I do. Again he mimicked my 
words and
did so in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I 
pulled the
trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum 
fluctuation his
gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.

Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some 
pangs of
guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really torments 
me. How
do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as before, but would a 
copy
feel different? Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape 
of the
entire experiment. My memory is  that the copy first appeared 3 feet to my 
LEFT,
(if I had arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face 
things
would have been more symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape 
shows the
original walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his 
RIGHT,
then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape, 
should I
be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I should morn 
the
death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am the copy would 
that mean
that I have no real past and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or 
should I
just burn the tape and forget all about it?


Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard it):

You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will be given a 
gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and everything will be fine.  
Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be 
given $1,000,000.  What do you do?  If you value the money and ascribe to certain 
philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than 
shooting the clone.



 you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness 
that you
identify with.


I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

 You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are 
produced by
some activity of your brain.


Yes.

 Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, 
even
if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in 
principle
you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just 
right, you
will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.


Yes.

 Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the 
same
atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are 
functionally
equivalent.


Yes.

 We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together 
with

Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:00 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 10/24/2012 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Oct 24, 2012, at 9:02 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

   On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote

   I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed
 after watching the movie The Prestige


 In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10 years,
 and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the
 book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had
 somewhat similar themes, this is part of it:

  About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It
 could  find the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the
 limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to
 construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of a second and without
 harming the original in any way. You may be surprised that I was able to
 build such a complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good
 I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all
 the latest tools from Sears.

 I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating
 myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with
 smoke (damn those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and
 then 3 feet to my left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that
 instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I
 yelled This is monstrous, there can only be one of me, my copy yelled
 exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached
 for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think I'm
 strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the double
 also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted you don't have the
 guts to pull the trigger, but I do. Again he mimicked my words and did so
 in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the
 trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum
 fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.

 Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some
 pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really
 torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as
 before, but would a copy feel different? Actually there is a way to be
 certain, I have a video tape of the entire experiment. My memory is  that
 the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he
 appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things would have been more
 symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original
 walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT,
 then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape,
 should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I
 should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am
 the copy would that mean that I have no real past and my life is
 meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn the tape and forget all
 about it?


 Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard
 it):

 You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you
 will be given a gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and
 everything will be fine.  Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be
 allowed to leave the room and will be given $1,000,000.  What do you do?
 If you value the money and ascribe to certain philosophical schools, the
 logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone.



you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness
 that you identify with.


 I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

  You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are
 produced by some activity of your brain.


 Yes.

Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you
 suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from every other
 atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put
 back just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious
 again.


 Yes.


   Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use
 the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are
 functionally equivalent.


 Yes.

We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together
 with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue
 right where it left off (from before you were obliterated).


 Yes.


  It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we
 paused the VM, moved it to a different physical

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-23 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:26, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/22/2012 12:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:




2012/10/22 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com


On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com  
wrote:

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new  
type of indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in  
error, so there was no point in reading about things built on top  
of that


 From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM  
duplication, you will live both at W and at W


Yes.

yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place

Yes.

 so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first  
person and third person.


Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if  
we are identical then my first person experience of looking at you  
is identical to your first person experience of looking at me, and  
both our actions are identical for a third person looking at both  
of us. As long as we're identical it's meaningless to talk about 2  
conscious beings regardless of how many bodies or brains have been  
duplicated.


Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but  
then not thinking about what that really means, you haven't  
realized that a noun (like a brain) has been duplicated but a  
adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has not been as long as they are  
identical; you are treating adjectives as if they were nouns and  
that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused by the fact  
that if 2 identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as by  
forming different memories, then they are no longer identical. And  
finally you are confused by the fact that although they are not  
each other any more afterthose changes both  
still have a equal right to call themselves Bruno Marchal. After  
reading these multiple confusions in one step of your proof I saw  
no point in reading more, and I still don't.


John,

I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed  
after watching the movie The Prestige and it eventually led me to  
join this list.


Unless you consider yourself to be only a single momentary atom of  
thought, you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/ 
consciousness that you identify with.  You further believe that  
these thoughts and consciousness are produced by some activity of  
your brain.  Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible  
injury you suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated  
from every other atom, in principle you could be put back together,  
and if the atoms are put back just right, you will be removed and  
alive and well, and conscious again.


Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use  
the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and  
isotopes are functionally equivalent.  We could take apart your  
current atoms, then put you back together with atoms from a  
different pile and your consciousness would continue right where it  
left off (from before you were obliterated).  It would be as if a  
simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we paused the VM,  
moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed it.   
From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your  
physical incarnation and location has changed.


Assuming you are with me so far, an interesting question emerges:  
what happens to your consciousness when duplicated?  Either an atom  
for atom replica of yourself is created in two places or your VM  
image which contains your brain emulation is copied to two  
different computers while paused, and then both are resumed.   
Initially, the sensory input to the two duplicates could be the  
same, and in a sense they are still the same mind, just with two  
instances, but then something interesting happens once   
different input is fed to the two instances: they split.  You could  
say they split in the same sense as when  someone opens  
the steel box to see whether the cat is alive or dead.  All the  
splitting in quantum mechanics may be the result of our infinite  
instances discovering/learning different things about our infinite  
environments.


I would add that what's interresting in the duplication is the what  
happens next probability (when the two copies diverge). If you're  
about to do an experience (for exemple opening a door and looking  
what is behind) and that just before opening the door, your are  
duplicated, the copy is put in the same position in front of an  
identical door, the fact that you were originally (just before  
duplication) in front of a door that opens on new york city, what  
is the probability that when you open it *it is* new york city...  
in case of a single universe (limited) where not duplications of  
state could appear the answer is straighforward, it is 100%, but

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-22 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2012/10/22 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com



 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


   I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new type of
 indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error, so there
 was no point in reading about things built on top of that


  From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM
 duplication, you will live both at W and at W


 Yes.

 yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place


 Yes.

  so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first person
 and third person.


 Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if we
 are identical then my first person experience of looking at you is
 identical to your first person experience of looking at me, and both our
 actions are identical for a third person looking at both of us. As long as
 we're identical it's meaningless to talk about 2 conscious beings
 regardless of how many bodies or brains have been duplicated.

 Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but then not
 thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that a noun
 (like a brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has
 not been as long as they are identical; you are treating adjectives as if
 they were nouns and that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused
 by the fact that if 2 identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as
 by forming different memories, then they are no longer identical. And
 finally you are confused by the fact that although they are not each other
 any more after those changes both still have a equal right to call
 themselves Bruno Marchal. After reading these multiple confusions in one
 step of your proof I saw no point in reading more, and I still don't.


 John,

 I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed after
 watching the movie The Prestige and it eventually led me to join this
 list.

 Unless you consider yourself to be only a single momentary atom of
 thought, you probably believe there is some stream of
 thoughts/consciousness that you identify with.  You further believe that
 these thoughts and consciousness are produced by some activity of your
 brain.  Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you
 suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from every other
 atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put
 back just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious
 again.

 Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the same
 atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are
 functionally equivalent.  We could take apart your current atoms, then put
 you back together with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness
 would continue right where it left off (from before you were obliterated).
  It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we
 paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed
 it.  From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your
 physical incarnation and location has changed.

 Assuming you are with me so far, an interesting question emerges: what
 happens to your consciousness when duplicated?  Either an atom for atom
 replica of yourself is created in two places or your VM image which
 contains your brain emulation is copied to two different computers while
 paused, and then both are resumed.  Initially, the sensory input to the two
 duplicates could be the same, and in a sense they are still the same mind,
 just with two instances, but then something interesting happens once
 different input is fed to the two instances: they split.  You could say
 they split in the same sense as when someone opens the steel box to see
 whether the cat is alive or dead.  All the splitting in quantum mechanics
 may be the result of our infinite instances discovering/learning different
 things about our infinite environments.


I would add that what's interresting in the duplication is the what happens
next probability (when the two copies diverge). If you're about to do an
experience (for exemple opening a door and looking what is behind) and that
just before opening the door, your are duplicated, the copy is put in the
same position in front of an identical door, the fact that you were
originally (just before duplication) in front of a door that opens on new
york city, what is the probability that when you open it *it is* new york
city... in case of a single universe (limited) where not duplications of
state could appear the answer is straighforward, it is 100%, but in case of
comp or MWI, the probability is not 100%, you must take in account all
duplications (now and then) and there relative measure. That is the
measure problem. The before divergence is not interresting,

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-22 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 1:48 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 If there is a top-down effect of the mind on the atoms then there we
 would expect some scientific evidence of this.


 These words are a scientific evidence of this. The atoms of my brain are
 being manipulated from the top down. I am directly projecting what I want to
 say through my mind in such a way that the atoms of my brain facilitate
 changes in the tissues of my body. Fingers move. Keys click.

You assert that there is top-down manipulation of the atoms in your
brain but the scientific evidence is against you.

 Evidence would
 constitute, for example, neurons firing when measurements of
 transmembrane potentials, ion concentrations etc. suggest that they
 should not.


 Do not neurons fire when I decide to type?

Yes, but you decide to type because neurons fire. You can't have a
decision without the physical process, so every decision or other
mental process has a correlating physical process.

 What you are expecting would be nothing but another homunculus. If there was
 some special sauce oozing out of your neurons which looked like...what?
 pictures of me moving my fingers? How would that explain how I am inside
 those pictures. The problem is that you are committed to the realism of
 cells and neurons over thoughts and feelings - even when we understand that
 our idea of neurons are themselves only thoughts and feelings. This isn't a
 minor glitch, it is The Grand Canyon.

 What has to be done is to realize that thoughts and feelings cannot be made
 out of forms and functions, but rather forms and functions are what thoughts
 and feelings look like from an exterior, impersonal perspective. The
 thoughts and feelings are the full-spectrum phenomenon, the forms and
 functions a narrow band of that spectrum. The narrowness of that band is
 what maximizes the universality of it. Physics is looking a slice of
 experience across all phenomena, effectively amputating all of the meaning
 and perceptual inertia which has accumulated orthogonally to that slice.
 This is the looong way around when it comes to consciousness as
 consciousness is all about the longitudinal history of experience, not the
 spatial-exterior mechanics of the moment.

Craig, I have repeatedly explained how entertaining your hypothesis
that consciousness is substrate-dependent rather than
function-dependent, which on the face of it is not unreasonable, leads
to absurdity. You actually seem to agree with this below without
realising it.

 You claim that such anomalous behaviour of neurons and
 other cells due to consciousness is widespread, yet it has never been
 experimentally observed. Why?


 Nobody except you and John Clark are suggesting any anomalous behavior. This
 is your blind spot. I don't know if you can see beyond. I am not optimistic.
 If there were any anomalous behavior of neurons, they would STILL require
 another meta-level of anomalous behaviors to explain them. Whatever level of
 description you choose for human consciousness - the brain, the body, the
 extended body, CNS, neurons, molecules, atoms, quanta... it DOESN'T MATTER
 AT ALL to the hard problem. There is still NO WAY for us to be inside of
 those descriptions, and even if there were, there is no conceivable purpose
 for 'our' being there in the first place.  This isn't a cause for despair or
 giving up, it is a triumph of insight. It is to see that the world is round
 if you are far away from it, but flat if you are on the surface. You keep
 trying to say that if the world were round you would see anomalous dips and
 valleys where the Earth begins to curve. You are not getting it. Reality is
 exactly what it seems to be, and it is many other things as well. Just
 because our understanding brings us sophisticated views of what we are from
 the outside in does not in any way validate the supremacy of the realism
 which we rely on from the inside out to even make sense of science.

If the the behaviour of neurons cannot be described and predicted
using physical laws then there must be anomalous at play. How else
could you explain it?

 I don't mean putting an extra module into the brain, I mean putting
 the brain directly into the same configuration it is put into by
 learning the language in the normal way.


 That can't be done. It's like saying you will put New York City directly in
 the same configuration as Shanghai. It's meaningless. Even if you could move
 the population of Shanghai to New York or demolish New York and rebuild it
 in the shape of Shanghai, it wouldn't matter because consciousness develops
 through time. It is made of significance which accumulates through sense
 experience - *not just 'data'*.

Well, if you did disassemble New York and put the atoms into
Shanghai's configuration, including the population, then you would
have Shanghai. Not going to happen tomorrow but where is the
theoretical problem?

  No such thing. Does any imitation function

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-22 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 21 Oct 2012, at 18:42, Jason Resch wrote:




On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:

Hi John,

On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote:


Bruno,
especially in my identification as responding to relations.
Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level  
of thinking, more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we  
have no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human  
attribute because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a  
cauliflower to clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In  
cauliflowerese, of course).


My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self- 
consciousness, as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to  
the ability to build a representation of one self. Then I have  
enlarged the spectrum up to some spiders and the octopi, just by  
reading a lot about them, looking video.


But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say  
I know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to  
different scalings.


The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different  
reason (the main one is that it is Turing Universal):


x + 0 = x
x + s(y) = s(x + y)

 x *0 = 0
 x*s(y) = x*y + x

But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that  
if a property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor  
operation, then it is true for all natural numbers. That is the  
infinity of axioms:


(F(0)  Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x),

with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus  
defined with 0, s, +, *),


Then you get Löbianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you  
and me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can  
develop maximal awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics  
retrievable by that theology, and the observation and inference on  
their most probable neighborhoods.


Löbianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create  
and enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold.




Bruno,

Might there be still other axioms (which we are not aware of, or at  
least do not use) that could lead to even higher states of  
consciousness than we presently have?



Yes, there are interesting transfinities below and beyond omega_1^CK  
(the Kleene Church first non constructive ordinal). This has  
plausibly, with comp, some relation with possible consciousness states  
(but that is not obvious and depends on definitions).






Also, it isn't quite clear to me how something needs to be added to  
Turing universality to expand the capabilities of consciousness, if  
all consciousness is the result of computation.



Gosh! It is only recent, for me, that I even think that universal  
machines are already conscious. I thought Lôbianity was needed. But  
then it is basically the same as the consciousness--self- 
consciousness type of consciousness enrichment/delusion.  In a  
sense, abstract universality is maximally conscious, maximally  
undeluded, or awake, somehow.


But Turing universality is cheap and concerns an ability to imitate  
other machine, not to understand them, so for provability and beliefs,  
and knowledge there are transfinite improvement and enlargement  
possible.
We are not just conscious, we differentiate in developing beliefs, and  
get greater and greater view on truth.



It is like you might be near doing a kind of  Searle error perhaps.  
A computation can emulate consciousness, but the computation is not  
conscious, only the person emulated by that computations, she can  
always progress infinitely (even if restricted on the search of  
arithmetical truth), develop more and more beliefs and knowledge.  
Particular universal machines will develop particular parts (even if  
transfinite) of arithmetical truth.


But G and G*, that is the modal logic of the provability of the Löbian  
machines, is a treshold. Despite growing transfinitely on her  
knowledge(s) of the arithmetical truth, as long as they remain self- 
referentially correct, they will obey to G and G*, for their theory of  
provability. If consistent, they will for ever been able to prove that  
they are consistent, for example, and they can prove that for  
themselves. The abstract theology is invariant despite the evolution  
of the arithmetical content of the B in Bp. PA and ZF have very  
different arithmetical beliefs, but both obeys to G and G*.


Consciousness, from the first person perspective is more related to  
all computations going through my states, than any particular  
computations. The living self is not a computer, it is a believer,  
supported by infinities of computer (by UDA).


I am happy you are open to the idea that universal machine are all  
conscious, it is then, the state of you before developing any more  
beliefs than those making you universal. Your first person  
indeterminacy, in that state, is all other possible machine/dreams.
The

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-22 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote

 I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed after
 watching the movie The Prestige


In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10 years,
and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the
book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had
somewhat similar themes, this is part of it:

 About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It
could  find the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the
limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to
construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of a second and without
harming the original in any way. You may be surprised that I was able to
build such a complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good
I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all
the latest tools from Sears.

I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating
myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with
smoke (damn those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and
then 3 feet to my left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that
instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I
yelled This is monstrous, there can only be one of me, my copy yelled
exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached
for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think I'm
strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the double
also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted you don't have the
guts to pull the trigger, but I do. Again he mimicked my words and did so
in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the
trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum
fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.

Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some
pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really
torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as
before, but would a copy feel different? Actually there is a way to be
certain, I have a video tape of the entire experiment. My memory is  that
the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he
appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things would have been more
symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original
walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT,
then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape,
should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I
should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am
the copy would that mean that I have no real past and my life is
meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn the tape and forget all
about it?

 you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that
 you identify with.


I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

   You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are produced
 by some activity of your brain.


Yes.

 Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered,
 even if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in
 principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back
 just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.


Yes.


  Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the
 same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are
 functionally equivalent.


Yes.

 We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with
 atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right
 where it left off (from before you were obliterated).


Yes.


 It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we
 paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed
 it.  From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your
 physical incarnation and location has changed.


Yes.


  what happens to your consciousness when duplicated?


When what is duplicated? Adjectives, like consciousness or Jason Resch, do
not duplicate in the same way that nouns, like brains, do. If I exactly
duplicate a iPod playing loud music the iPod is duplicated but the
adjective loud is not duplicated, but if I then change the loudness level
on one of them but not the other then the two differentiate. In the same
way If I exactly duplicate you and a cat as you consciously look at the cat
then your body and brain are duplicated but the adjective describing what
the brain is doing, consciousness, is not duplicated; however if I then
change one cat but not the other then the conscious experience and memories
formed by observing the cat will be

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-22 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 21 Oct 2012, at 19:46, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, Oct 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new  
type of indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in  
error, so there was no point in reading about things built on top of  
that


 From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM  
duplication, you will live both at W and at W


Yes.

yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place

Yes.

 so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first  
person and third person.


Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if  
we are identical then my first person experience of looking at you  
is identical to your first person experience of looking at me, and  
both our actions are identical for a third person looking at both of  
us. As long as we're identical it's meaningless to talk about 2  
conscious beings regardless of how many bodies or brains have been  
duplicated.


Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but then  
not thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that  
a noun (like a brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like  
Bruno Marchal) has not been as long as they are identical; you are  
treating adjectives as if they were nouns and that's bound to cause  
confusion. You are also confused by the fact that if 2 identical  
things change in nonidentical ways, such as by forming different  
memories, then they are no longer identical.


The uncertainty question bears on the personal memories. You attribute  
me imaginary identifications.







And finally you are confused by the fact that although they are not  
each other any more after those changes both still have a equal  
right to call themselves Bruno Marchal. After reading these multiple  
confusions in one step of your proof I saw no point in reading more,  
and I still don't.



That is stopping thinking.






 By the way, it is irrational to stop in the middle of a proof.

If one of the steps in a proof contains a blunder then it would be  
irrational to keep reading it.



I say, with all the definition and the protocol, that P(W) = 1/2. What  
do you say?


You told me W and M. But when I interview the two John Clarck, none of  
them has written in his personal diary; I feel to be in W and in M.








 By assuming a physical reality at the start

That seems like a pretty damn good place to make an assumption.


If front of deep conceptual problem, like the mind body problem, it is  
better to remain neutral on the different possible rational ways to  
conceive reality.







  But the physical reality can emerge or appear without a physical  
reality at the start


Maybe maybe not, but even if you're right that wouldn't make it any  
less real; and maybe physical reality didn't even need to emerge  
because there was no start.


 If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and  
if I make a change in your brain then your conscious state changes  
too, so I'd say that it's a good assumption that consciousness is  
interlinked with a physical object, in fact it's a downright superb  
assumption.


  But this is easily shown to be false when we assume comp.

It's not false and I don't need to assume it and I haven't theorized  
it from armchair philosophy either, I can show it's true  
experimentally.



Nothing can be shown true experimentally. Things can be disprove  
experimentally, but in science we cannot do any assertative statement  
on reality, except negative one.


Even if someone survive with an artificial digital brain, that will  
still not be a public proof of comp.






And when theory and experiment come into conflict it is the theory  
that must submit not the experiment.


Of course.



If I insert drugs into your bloodstream it will change the chemistry  
of your brain, and when that happens your conscious state will also  
change. Depending on the drug I can make you happy-sad, friendly- 
angry, frightened-clam, alert-sleepy, dead-alive, you name it.




 If your state appears in a far away galaxies [...]

Then he will be me and he will remain me until differences between  
that far away galaxy and this one cause us to change in some way,  
such as by forming different memories; after that he will no longer  
be me, although we will still both be John K Clark because John K  
Clark has been duplicated, the machine duplicated the body of him  
and the environmental differences caused his consciousness to  
diverge. As I've said before this is a odd situation but in no way  
paradoxical.


You are the one talking about confusion and seeing paradox.
but don't you think that this other John Clark, in the galaxy far  
away, will not think oh, that marchal was right, my future was  
indeterminate as I have been unable to predict what just happened.


You just stop doing the thought experiences. yes, there is no

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-22 Thread meekerdb


On 10/22/2012 12:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:



2012/10/22 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com



On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com
mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new 
type of
indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error, 
so there
was no point in reading about things built on top of that


 From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM 
duplication,
you will live both at W and at W


Yes.

yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place


Yes.

 so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first 
person
and third person.


Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if we 
are
identical then my first person experience of looking at you is 
identical to your
first person experience of looking at me, and both our actions are 
identical for
a third person looking at both of us. As long as we're identical it's
meaningless to talk about 2 conscious beings regardless of how many 
bodies or
brains have been duplicated.

Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but then not
thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that a noun 
(like a
brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has not 
been as
long as they are identical; you are treating adjectives as if they were 
nouns
and that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused by the fact 
that if 2
identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as by forming 
different
memories, then they are no longer identical. And finally you are 
confused by the
fact that although they are not each other any more after those changes 
both
still have a equal right to call themselves Bruno Marchal. After 
reading these
multiple confusions in one step of your proof I saw no point in reading 
more,
and I still don't.


John,

I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed after 
watching
the movie The Prestige and it eventually led me to join this list.

Unless you consider yourself to be only a single momentary atom of thought, 
you
probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that you 
identify
with.  You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are 
produced by
some activity of your brain.  Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever 
horrible
injury you suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from 
every other
atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put 
back
just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.

Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the same 
atoms or
not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are functionally 
equivalent.  We
could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with atoms 
from a
different pile and your consciousness would continue right where it left 
off (from
before you were obliterated).  It would be as if a simulation of your brain 
were
running on a VM, we paused the VM, moved it to a different physical 
computer and
then resumed it.  From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, 
yet your
physical incarnation and location has changed.

Assuming you are with me so far, an interesting question emerges: what 
happens to
your consciousness when duplicated?  Either an atom for atom replica of 
yourself is
created in two places or your VM image which contains your brain emulation 
is copied
to two different computers while paused, and then both are resumed.  
Initially, the
sensory input to the two duplicates could be the same, and in a sense they 
are still
the same mind, just with two instances, but then something interesting 
happens once
different input is fed to the two instances: they split.  You could say 
they split
in the same sense as when someone opens the steel box to see whether the 
cat is
alive or dead.  All the splitting in quantum mechanics may be the result of 
our
infinite instances discovering/learning different things about our infinite
environments.


I would add that what's interresting in the duplication is the what happens next 
probability (when the two copies diverge). If you're about to do an experience (for 
exemple opening a door and looking what is behind) and that just before opening the 
door, your are duplicated, the copy is put in the same position in front of an identical 
door, the fact

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-22 Thread Bruno Marchal


Hi Roger,

You just describe the non-comp conviction. You don't give any  
argument. With comp, you are the owner of an infinity of machine, it  
does not matter if it is in silicon or carbon, as long as the  
components do the right relative things in the most probable history.


You are just insulting many creatures just by referring to their 3p  
shapes. You are not cautious. You might insult God in the process.   
Certainly so in case they are conscious, imo.


Any way, strong AI is the hypothesis that machine can be conscious.  
Comp is the assumption that your body behave locally like a machine,  
so that you might change it in some futures.



Bruno



On 21 Oct 2012, at 22:35, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

1p is to know by acquaintance (only possible to humans).
   I conjecture that any statement pertaining to humans containing  
1p is TRUE.


3p is to know by description (works for both humans and computers).
   I believe that any statement pertaining to computers containing  
1p is FALSE.


Consciousness would be to know that you are conscious, or

   for a real person, 1p(1p) = TRUE
   and saying that he is conscious to others would be 3p(1p) = TRUE
   or even (3p(1p(1p))) = TRUE


But a computer cannot experience anything (is blocked from 1p), or

   for a computer, 3p (1p) = FALSE (or any statement containing 1p)
   but 3p(3p) = TRUE (or any proposition not containing 1p = TRUE)


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/21/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-21, 09:56:39
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life


Hi John,


On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote:


Bruno,
especially in my identification as responding to relations.
Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of  
thinking, more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we have  
no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute  
because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to  
clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of  
course).



My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self- 
consciousness, as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to  
the ability to build a representation of one self. Then I have  
enlarged the spectrum up to some spiders and the octopi, just by  
reading a lot about them, looking video.



But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say  
I know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to  
different scalings.



The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different  
reason (the main one is that it is Turing Universal):



x + 0 = x
x + s(y) = s(x + y)


x *0 = 0
x*s(y) = x*y + x


But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that  
if a property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor  
operation, then it is true for all natural numbers. That is the  
infinity of axioms:



(F(0)  Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x),


with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus  
defined with 0, s, +, *),



Then you get L?ianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you  
and me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can  
develop maximal awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics  
retrievable by that theology, and the observation and inference on  
their most probable neighborhoods.



L?ianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create  
and enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold.





Bruno











On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness
or it cannot perceive its environment.


Are you sure?

Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am  
not sure they have self-consciousness.


Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might  
come from the need of this for the self-movie living creature having  
some important mass.


all life is a very fuzzy notion.

Bruno









Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/17/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life




On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb  wrote:



If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so  
how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no  
answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed.




I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted, is  
not a paradigm of efficient design.  Consciousness might just be a  
side-effect



But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 The atoms in my brain don't have to know how to read Chinese. They only
 need to know how to be carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms. The complex
 behaviour which is reading Chinese comes from the interaction of billions of
 these atoms doing their simple thing.


 I don't think that is true. The other way around makes just as much sense of
 not more: Reading Chinese is a simple behavior which drives the behavior of
 billions of atoms to do a complex interaction. To me, it has to be both
 bottom-up and top-down. It seems completely arbitrary prejudice to presume
 one over the other just because we think that we understand the bottom-up so
 well.

 Once you can see how it is the case that it must be both bottom-up and
 top-down at the same time, the next step is to see that there is no
 possibility for it to be a cause-effect relationship, but rather a dual
 aspect ontological relation. Nothing is translating the functions of neurons
 into a Cartesian theater of experience - there is nowhere to put it in the
 tissue of the brain and there is no evidence of a translation from neural
 protocols to sensorimotive protocols - they are clearly the same thing.

If there is a top-down effect of the mind on the atoms then there we
would expect some scientific evidence of this. Evidence would
constitute, for example, neurons firing when measurements of
transmembrane potentials, ion concentrations etc. suggest that they
should not. You claim that such anomalous behaviour of neurons and
other cells due to consciousness is widespread, yet it has never been
experimentally observed. Why?

 If the atoms in my brain were put into a Chinese-reading configuration,
 either through a lot of work learning the language or through direct
 manipulation, then I would be able to understand Chinese.


 It's understandable to assume that, but no I don't think it's like that. You
 can't transplant a language into a brain instantaneously because there is no
 personal history of association. Your understanding of language is not a
 lookup table in space, it is made out of you. It's like if you walked around
 with Google translator in your brain. You could enter words and phrases and
 turn them into you language, but you would never know the language first
 hand. The knowledge would be impersonal - accessible, but not woven into
 your proprietary sense.

I don't mean putting an extra module into the brain, I mean putting
the brain directly into the same configuration it is put into by
learning the language in the normal way.

 I'm sorry, but this whole passage is a non sequitur as far as the fading
 qualia thought experiment goes. You have to explain what you think would
 happen if part of your brain were replaced with a functional equivalent.


 There is no functional equivalent. That's what I am saying. Functional
 equivalence when it comes to a person is a non-sequitur. Not only is every
 person unique, they are an expression of uniqueness itself. They define
 uniqueness in a never-before-experienced way. This is a completely new way
 of understanding consciousness and signal. Not as mechanism, but as
 animism-mechanism.



 A functional equivalent would stimulate the remaining neurons the same as
 the part that is replaced.


 No such thing. Does any imitation function identically to an original?

In a thought experiment we can say that the imitation stimulates the
surrounding neurons in the same way as the original. We can even say
that it does this miraculously. Would such a device *necessarily*
replicate the consciousness along with the neural impulses, or could
the two be separated?

 The original paper says this is a computer chip but this is not necessary
 to make the point: we could just say that it is any device, not being the
 normal biological neurons. If consciousness is substrate-dependent (as you
 claim) then the device could do its job of stimulating the neurons normally
 while lacking or differing in consciousness. Since it stimulates the neurons
 normally you would behave normally. If you didn't then it would be a
 miracle, since your muscles would have to contract normally. Do you at least
 see this point, or do you think that your muscles would do something
 different?


 I see the point completely. That's the problem is that you keep trying to
 explain to me what is obvious, while I am trying to explain to you something
 much more subtle and sophisticated. I can replace neurons which control my
 muscles because muscles are among the most distant and replaceable parts of
 'me'. These nerves are outbound efferent nerves and the target muscle cells
 are for the most part willing servants. The same goes for amputating my arm.
 I can replace it in theory. What I am saying though is that amputating my
 head is not even theoretically possible. Wherever my head is, that is where
 I have to be. If I replace my brain with other parts, the more parts

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 21.10.2012 10:05 Stathis Papaioannou said the following:

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Craig Weinberg
whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:



...


I don't think that is true. The other way around makes just as much
sense of not more: Reading Chinese is a simple behavior which
drives the behavior of billions of atoms to do a complex
interaction. To me, it has to be both bottom-up and top-down. It
seems completely arbitrary prejudice to presume one over the other
just because we think that we understand the bottom-up so well.

Once you can see how it is the case that it must be both bottom-up
and top-down at the same time, the next step is to see that there
is no possibility for it to be a cause-effect relationship, but
rather a dual aspect ontological relation. Nothing is translating
the functions of neurons into a Cartesian theater of experience -
there is nowhere to put it in the tissue of the brain and there is
no evidence of a translation from neural protocols to sensorimotive
protocols - they are clearly the same thing.


If there is a top-down effect of the mind on the atoms then there we
would expect some scientific evidence of this. Evidence would


Scientific evidence, in my view, is the existence of science. Do you 
mean that for example scientific books have assembled themselves from 
atoms according to the M-theory?


Evgenii

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 20 Oct 2012, at 19:18, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Friday, October 19, 2012 3:29:39 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 17 Oct 2012, at 17:04, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 10:16:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal
wrote:

On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Two men and two women live together. The woman has a child. 2+2=5

You mean two men + two women + a baby = five persons.

You need the arithmetical 2+2=4, and 4+1 = 5, in your argument.

Bruno

I only see that one person plus another person can eventually equal
three or more people.

With the operation of sexual reproduction, not by the operation of
addition.

Only if you consider the 2+2=5 to be a complex special case and
2+2=4 to be a simple general rule.

2+2 = 5 is not a special case of 2+2=4.

It could just as easily be flipped.

Errors are possible pour complex subjects.

I can say 2+2=4 by the operation of reflexive neurology, and 2+2=5
is an operation of multiplication. It depends on what level of
description you privilege by over-signifying and the consequence
that has on the other levels which are under-signified. To me, the
Bruno view is near-sighted when it comes to physics (only sees
numbers, substance is disqualified)

It means that you think that there is a flaw in UDA, as the non
materiality of physics is a consequence of the comp hypothesis. There
is no choice in the matter (pun included).

and far-sighted when it comes to numbers (does not question the
autonomy of numbers).

Because computer science explains in details how number can be
autonomous, or less simplified: how arithmetical realization can
generate the beliefs in bodies, relative autonomy, etc. You seem to
want to ignore the computer science behind the comp hypothesis.

What is it that can tell one number from another?

It is not simple to prove, but the laws of addition and multiplication
is enough. I am not sanguine on numbers, I can take fortran programs
in place, with the same explanation for the origin of the
consciousness/realities couplings.

What knows that + is different from * and how?

Because we know the definition, and practice first order logical
language. Everything I say is a theorem in the theory:

x + 0 = x
x + s(y) = s(x + y)

x *0 = 0
x*s(y) = x*y + x

Why doesn't arithmetic truth need a meta-arithmetic machine to allow
it to function (to generate the ontology of 'function' in the first
place)?

It does not. That's the amazing whole theoretical computer science
point. The meta-arithmetic is already a consequence of the four laws
above.

Bruno

It's all sense. It has to be sense.

It depends when you start counting and how long it takes you to
finish.

It depends on what we are talking about. Person with sex is not
numbers with addition.

You are just changing definition, not invalidating a proof (the
proof that 2+2=4, in arithmetic).

I'm not trying to invalidate the proof within one context of sense,
I'm pointing out that it isn't that simple. There are other contexts
of sense which reduce differently.

Craig

Bruno

Craig

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 20 Oct 2012, at 19:29, John Clark wrote:


On Sat, Oct 20, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  I have no idea what that means, not a clue

 Probably for the same reason that you stop at step 3 in the UD  
Argument.


Probably. I remember I stopped reading after your proof of the  
existence of a new type of indeterminacy never seen before because  
the proof was in error, so there was no point in reading about  
things built on top of that; but I don't remember if that was step 3  
or not.


From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM  
duplication, you will live both at W and at W, yet your agree that  
both copy will feel to live in only one place, so the error you have  
seen was dues to a confusion between first person and third person. We  
were many to tell you this, and it seems you are stick in that  
confusion.


By the way, it is irrational to stop in the middle of a proof.  
Obviously, reading the sequel, can help you to see the confusion you  
are doing.






You assume a physical reality,

I assume that if physical reality doesn't exist then either the  
words physical or reality or exists are meaningless, and I  
don't think any of those words are.


By assuming a physical reality at the start, you make it into a  
primitive ontology. But the physical reality can emerge or appear  
without a physical reality at the start, like in the numbers' dreams.






 and you assume that our consciousness is some phenomenon related  
exclusively to some construct (brain, bodies)


If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and if I  
make a change in your brain then your conscious state changes too,  
so I'd say that it's a good assumption that consciousness is  
interlinked with a physical object, in fact it's a downright superb  
assumption.


But this is easily shown to be false when we assume comp. If your  
state appears in a far away galaxies, what will happen far away might  
change your outcome of an experience you decided to do here. You  
believe in an identity thesis which can't work, unless you singularize  
both the mind and the brain matter with special sort of infinities.






  so if it [Evolution] produced it [consciousness]

No. With comp, consciousness was there before.

Well I don't know about you but I don't think my consciousness was  
there before Evolution figured out how to make brains, I believe  
this because I can't seem to remember events that were going on  
during the Precambrian. I've always been a little hazy about what  
exactly comp meant but I had the general feeling that I sorta  
agreed with it, but apparently not.


You keep defending comp, in your dialog with Craig, but you don't  
follow its logical consequences,
I guess, this is by not wanting to take seriously the first person and  
third person distinction, which is the key of the UD argument.


You can attach consciousness to the owner of a brain, but the owner  
itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in  
arithmetic (or in a physical universe if that exists) and realizing  
that brain state.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Bruno Marchal


Hi John,

On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote:


Bruno,
especially in my identification as responding to relations.
Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of  
thinking, more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we have  
no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute  
because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to  
clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of  
course).


My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self- 
consciousness, as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to  
the ability to build a representation of one self. Then I have  
enlarged the spectrum up to some spiders and the octopi, just by  
reading a lot about them, looking video.


But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say I  
know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to  
different scalings.


The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different reason  
(the main one is that it is Turing Universal):


x + 0 = x
x + s(y) = s(x + y)

 x *0 = 0
 x*s(y) = x*y + x

But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that if  
a property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor  
operation, then it is true for all natural numbers. That is the  
infinity of axioms:


(F(0)  Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x),

with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus  
defined with 0, s, +, *),


Then you get Löbianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you and  
me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can develop  
maximal awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics  
retrievable by that theology, and the observation and inference on  
their most probable neighborhoods.


Löbianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create and  
enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold.



Bruno







On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness
or it cannot perceive its environment.

Are you sure?

Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am  
not sure they have self-consciousness.


Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might  
come from the need of this for the self-movie living creature having  
some important mass.


all life is a very fuzzy notion.

Bruno








Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/17/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life




On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb  wrote:


If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so  
how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no  
answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed.


I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted, is  
not a paradigm of efficient design.  Consciousness might just be a  
side-effect


But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin  
was dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence,  
so a intelligent computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't  
think Darwin was dead wrong.






Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper,  
in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the  
coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic.



Bruno




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Sunday, October 21, 2012 4:06:16 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 

  The atoms in my brain don't have to know how to read Chinese. They only 
  need to know how to be carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms. The complex 
  behaviour which is reading Chinese comes from the interaction of 
 billions of 
  these atoms doing their simple thing. 
  
  
  I don't think that is true. The other way around makes just as much 
 sense of 
  not more: Reading Chinese is a simple behavior which drives the behavior 
 of 
  billions of atoms to do a complex interaction. To me, it has to be both 
  bottom-up and top-down. It seems completely arbitrary prejudice to 
 presume 
  one over the other just because we think that we understand the 
 bottom-up so 
  well. 
  
  Once you can see how it is the case that it must be both bottom-up and 
  top-down at the same time, the next step is to see that there is no 
  possibility for it to be a cause-effect relationship, but rather a dual 
  aspect ontological relation. Nothing is translating the functions of 
 neurons 
  into a Cartesian theater of experience - there is nowhere to put it in 
 the 
  tissue of the brain and there is no evidence of a translation from 
 neural 
  protocols to sensorimotive protocols - they are clearly the same thing. 

 If there is a top-down effect of the mind on the atoms then there we 
 would expect some scientific evidence of this. 


These words are a scientific evidence of this. The atoms of my brain are 
being manipulated from the top down. I am directly projecting what I want 
to say through my mind in such a way that the atoms of my brain facilitate 
changes in the tissues of my body. Fingers move. Keys click. 

 

 Evidence would 
 constitute, for example, neurons firing when measurements of 
 transmembrane potentials, ion concentrations etc. suggest that they 
 should not. 


Do not neurons fire when I decide to type? 

What you are expecting would be nothing but another homunculus. If there 
was some special sauce oozing out of your neurons which looked like...what? 
pictures of me moving my fingers? How would that explain how I am inside 
those pictures. The problem is that you are committed to the realism of 
cells and neurons over thoughts and feelings - even when we understand that 
our idea of neurons are themselves only thoughts and feelings. This isn't a 
minor glitch, it is The Grand Canyon.

What has to be done is to realize that thoughts and feelings cannot be made 
out of forms and functions, but rather forms and functions are what 
thoughts and feelings look like from an exterior, impersonal perspective. 
The thoughts and feelings are the full-spectrum phenomenon, the forms and 
functions a narrow band of that spectrum. The narrowness of that band is 
what maximizes the universality of it. Physics is looking a slice of 
experience across all phenomena, effectively amputating all of the meaning 
and perceptual inertia which has accumulated orthogonally to that slice. 
This is the looong way around when it comes to consciousness as 
consciousness is all about the longitudinal history of experience, not the 
spatial-exterior mechanics of the moment.
 

 You claim that such anomalous behaviour of neurons and 
 other cells due to consciousness is widespread, yet it has never been 
 experimentally observed. Why? 


Nobody except you and John Clark are suggesting any anomalous behavior. 
This is your blind spot. I don't know if you can see beyond. I am not 
optimistic. If there were any anomalous behavior of neurons, they would 
STILL require another meta-level of anomalous behaviors to explain them. 
Whatever level of description you choose for human consciousness - the 
brain, the body, the extended body, CNS, neurons, molecules, atoms, 
quanta... it DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL to the hard problem. There is still NO 
WAY for us to be inside of those descriptions, and even if there were, 
there is no conceivable purpose for 'our' being there in the first place.  
This isn't a cause for despair or giving up, it is a triumph of insight. It 
is to see that the world is round if you are far away from it, but flat if 
you are on the surface. You keep trying to say that if the world were round 
you would see anomalous dips and valleys where the Earth begins to curve. 
You are not getting it. Reality is exactly what it seems to be, and it is 
many other things as well. Just because our understanding brings us 
sophisticated views of what we are from the outside in does not in any way 
validate the supremacy of the realism which we rely on from the inside out 
to even make sense of science.
 


  If the atoms in my brain were put into a Chinese-reading configuration, 
  either through a lot of work learning the language or through direct 
  manipulation, then I would be able to understand Chinese. 
  
  
  It's understandable to assume that, but no I don't

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Stephen P. King


On 10/21/2012 4:05 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:


The atoms in my brain don't have to know how to read Chinese. They only
need to know how to be carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms. The complex
behaviour which is reading Chinese comes from the interaction of billions of
these atoms doing their simple thing.


I don't think that is true. The other way around makes just as much sense of
not more: Reading Chinese is a simple behavior which drives the behavior of
billions of atoms to do a complex interaction. To me, it has to be both
bottom-up and top-down. It seems completely arbitrary prejudice to presume
one over the other just because we think that we understand the bottom-up so
well.

Once you can see how it is the case that it must be both bottom-up and
top-down at the same time, the next step is to see that there is no
possibility for it to be a cause-effect relationship, but rather a dual
aspect ontological relation. Nothing is translating the functions of neurons
into a Cartesian theater of experience - there is nowhere to put it in the
tissue of the brain and there is no evidence of a translation from neural
protocols to sensorimotive protocols - they are clearly the same thing.

If there is a top-down effect of the mind on the atoms then there we
would expect some scientific evidence of this. Evidence would
constitute, for example, neurons firing when measurements of
transmembrane potentials, ion concentrations etc. suggest that they
should not. You claim that such anomalous behaviour of neurons and
other cells due to consciousness is widespread, yet it has never been
experimentally observed. Why?


Hi Stathis,

How would you set up the experiment? How do you control for an 
effect that may well be ubiquitous? Did you somehow miss the point that 
consciousness can only be observed in 1p? Why are you so insistent on a 
3p of it?





If the atoms in my brain were put into a Chinese-reading configuration,
either through a lot of work learning the language or through direct
manipulation, then I would be able to understand Chinese.


It's understandable to assume that, but no I don't think it's like that. You
can't transplant a language into a brain instantaneously because there is no
personal history of association. Your understanding of language is not a
lookup table in space, it is made out of you. It's like if you walked around
with Google translator in your brain. You could enter words and phrases and
turn them into you language, but you would never know the language first
hand. The knowledge would be impersonal - accessible, but not woven into
your proprietary sense.

I don't mean putting an extra module into the brain, I mean putting
the brain directly into the same configuration it is put into by
learning the language in the normal way.


How might we do that? Alter 1 neuron and you might not have the 
same mind.





I'm sorry, but this whole passage is a non sequitur as far as the fading
qualia thought experiment goes. You have to explain what you think would
happen if part of your brain were replaced with a functional equivalent.


There is no functional equivalent. That's what I am saying. Functional
equivalence when it comes to a person is a non-sequitur. Not only is every
person unique, they are an expression of uniqueness itself. They define
uniqueness in a never-before-experienced way. This is a completely new way
of understanding consciousness and signal. Not as mechanism, but as
animism-mechanism.



A functional equivalent would stimulate the remaining neurons the same as
the part that is replaced.


No such thing. Does any imitation function identically to an original?

In a thought experiment we can say that the imitation stimulates the
surrounding neurons in the same way as the original. We can even say
that it does this miraculously. Would such a device *necessarily*
replicate the consciousness along with the neural impulses, or could
the two be separated?


Is the brain strictly a classical system?




The original paper says this is a computer chip but this is not necessary
to make the point: we could just say that it is any device, not being the
normal biological neurons. If consciousness is substrate-dependent (as you
claim) then the device could do its job of stimulating the neurons normally
while lacking or differing in consciousness. Since it stimulates the neurons
normally you would behave normally. If you didn't then it would be a
miracle, since your muscles would have to contract normally. Do you at least
see this point, or do you think that your muscles would do something
different?


I see the point completely. That's the problem is that you keep trying to
explain to me what is obvious, while I am trying to explain to you something
much more subtle and sophisticated. I can replace neurons which control my
muscles because muscles are among the most distant and replaceable parts

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Jason Resch

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Hi John,

 On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote:

 Bruno,
 especially in my identification as responding to relations.
 Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of
 thinking, more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we have no
 idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE
 identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether
 she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course).


 My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self-consciousness,
 as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to the ability to build a
 representation of one self. Then I have enlarged the spectrum up to some
 spiders and the octopi, just by reading a lot about them, looking video.

 But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say I know
 nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to different
 scalings.

 The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different reason
 (the main one is that it is Turing Universal):

 x + 0 = x
 x + s(y) = s(x + y)

  x *0 = 0
  x*s(y) = x*y + x

 But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that if a
 property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor operation, then
 it is true for all natural numbers. That is the infinity of axioms:

 (F(0)  Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x),

 with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus defined
 with 0, s, +, *),

 Then you get Löbianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you and me.
 Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can develop maximal
 awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics retrievable by that
 theology, and the observation and inference on their most probable
 neighborhoods.

 Löbianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create and
 enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold.



Bruno,

Might there be still other axioms (which we are not aware of, or at least
do not use) that could lead to even higher states of consciousness than we
presently have?

Also, it isn't quite clear to me how something needs to be added to Turing
universality to expand the capabilities of consciousness, if all
consciousness is the result of computation.

Thanks,

Jason

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Jason Resch

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 20 Oct 2012, at 19:29, John Clark wrote:


 Well I don't know about you but I don't think my consciousness was there
 before Evolution figured out how to make brains, I believe this because I
 can't seem to remember events that were going on during the Precambrian.
 I've always been a little hazy about what exactly comp meant but I had
 the general feeling that I sorta agreed with it, but apparently not.


 You keep defending comp, in your dialog with Craig, but you don't follow
 its logical consequences,
 I guess, this is by not wanting to take seriously the first person and
 third person distinction, which is the key of the UD argument.

 You can attach consciousness to the owner of a brain, but the owner itself
 must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic (or in a
 physical universe if that exists) and realizing that brain state.


John,

I would also suggest that you read this link, it shows how an infinitely
large cosmos leads directly to quantum mechanics due to the observer's
inability to self-locate.  For someone who believes in both mechanism and
platonism, it is the exact scenario platonic programs should find
themselves in:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/3pg/aguirre_tegmark_layzer_cosmological/
http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.1066

Jason

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


   I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new type of
 indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error, so there
 was no point in reading about things built on top of that


  From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM
 duplication, you will live both at W and at W


Yes.

yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place


Yes.

 so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first person
 and third person.


Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if we are
identical then my first person experience of looking at you is identical to
your first person experience of looking at me, and both our actions are
identical for a third person looking at both of us. As long as we're
identical it's meaningless to talk about 2 conscious beings regardless of
how many bodies or brains have been duplicated.

Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but then not
thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that a noun
(like a brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has
not been as long as they are identical; you are treating adjectives as if
they were nouns and that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused
by the fact that if 2 identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as
by forming different memories, then they are no longer identical. And
finally you are confused by the fact that although they are not each other
any more after those changes both still have a equal right to call
themselves Bruno Marchal. After reading these multiple confusions in one
step of your proof I saw no point in reading more, and I still don't.

 By the way, it is irrational to stop in the middle of a proof.


If one of the steps in a proof contains a blunder then it would be
irrational to keep reading it.

 By assuming a physical reality at the start


That seems like a pretty damn good place to make an assumption.

  But the physical reality can emerge or appear without a physical reality
 at the start


Maybe maybe not, but even if you're right that wouldn't make it any less
real; and maybe physical reality didn't even need to emerge because there
was no start.


  If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and if I
 make a change in your brain then your conscious state changes too, so I'd
 say that it's a good assumption that consciousness is interlinked with a
 physical object, in fact it's a downright superb assumption.


   But this is easily shown to be false when we assume comp.


It's not false and I don't need to assume it and I haven't theorized it
from armchair philosophy either, I can show it's true experimentally. And
when theory and experiment come into conflict it is the theory that must
submit not the experiment. If I insert drugs into your bloodstream it will
change the chemistry of your brain, and when that happens your conscious
state will also change. Depending on the drug I can make you happy-sad,
friendly-angry, frightened-clam, alert-sleepy, dead-alive, you name it.


   If your state appears in a far away galaxies [...]


Then he will be me and he will remain me until differences between that far
away galaxy and this one cause us to change in some way, such as by forming
different memories; after that he will no longer be me, although we will
still both be John K Clark because John K Clark has been duplicated, the
machine duplicated the body of him and the environmental differences caused
his consciousness to diverge. As I've said before this is a odd situation
but in no way paradoxical.

 You keep defending comp, in your dialog with Craig,


I keep defending my ideas, comp is your homemade term not mine, I have no
use for it.

 You can attach consciousness to the owner of a brain,


Yes, consciousness is what the brain does.

  but the owner itself must attach his consciousness to all states
 existing in arithmetic


Then I must remember events that happened in the Precambrian because
arithmetic existed even back then, but I don't, I don't remember existing
then at all. Now that is a paradox! Therefore one of the assumptions must
be wrong, namely that the owner of a brain must attach his consciousness
to all states existing in arithmetic.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2012/10/21 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com

 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


   I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new type of
 indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error, so there
 was no point in reading about things built on top of that


  From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM
 duplication, you will live both at W and at W


 Yes.

 yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place


 Yes.

  so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first person
 and third person.


 Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if we are
 identical then my first person experience of looking at you is identical to
 your first person experience of looking at me, and both our actions are
 identical for a third person looking at both of us. As long as we're
 identical it's meaningless to talk about 2 conscious beings regardless of
 how many bodies or brains have been duplicated.

 Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but then not
 thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that a noun
 (like a brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has
 not been as long as they are identical; you are treating adjectives as if
 they were nouns and that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused
 by the fact that if 2 identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as
 by forming different memories, then they are no longer identical. And
 finally you are confused by the fact that although they are not each other
 any more after those changes both still have a equal right to call
 themselves Bruno Marchal. After reading these multiple confusions in one
 step of your proof I saw no point in reading more, and I still don't.

  By the way, it is irrational to stop in the middle of a proof.


 If one of the steps in a proof contains a blunder then it would be
 irrational to keep reading it.

  By assuming a physical reality at the start


 That seems like a pretty damn good place to make an assumption.

   But the physical reality can emerge or appear without a physical
 reality at the start


 Maybe maybe not, but even if you're right that wouldn't make it any less
 real; and maybe physical reality didn't even need to emerge because there
 was no start.


  If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and if I
 make a change in your brain then your conscious state changes too, so I'd
 say that it's a good assumption that consciousness is interlinked with a
 physical object, in fact it's a downright superb assumption.


   But this is easily shown to be false when we assume comp.


 It's not false and I don't need to assume it and I haven't theorized it
 from armchair philosophy either, I can show it's true experimentally. And
 when theory and experiment come into conflict it is the theory that must
 submit not the experiment. If I insert drugs into your bloodstream it will
 change the chemistry of your brain, and when that happens your conscious
 state will also change. Depending on the drug I can make you happy-sad,
 friendly-angry, frightened-clam, alert-sleepy, dead-alive, you name it.


   If your state appears in a far away galaxies [...]


 Then he will be me and he will remain me until differences between that
 far away galaxy and this one cause us to change in some way, such as by
 forming different memories; after that he will no longer be me, although we
 will still both be John K Clark because John K Clark has been duplicated,
 the machine duplicated the body of him and the environmental differences
 caused his consciousness to diverge. As I've said before this is a odd
 situation but in no way paradoxical.

  You keep defending comp, in your dialog with Craig,


 I keep defending my ideas, comp is your homemade term not mine, I have
 no use for it.

  You can attach consciousness to the owner of a brain,


 Yes, consciousness is what the brain does.

   but the owner itself must attach his consciousness to all states
 existing in arithmetic


 Then I must remember events that happened in the Precambrian because
 arithmetic existed even back then, but I don't, I don't remember existing
 then at all. Now that is a paradox! Therefore one of the assumptions must
 be wrong,


Therefore that shows that you do your best to turn the meaning of
everything you read to be able to marvel at yourself... but well, that only
fools you.

Quentin


 namely that the owner of a brain must attach his consciousness to all
 states existing in arithmetic.

   John K Clark

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Re: Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Roger Clough

Hi Bruno Marchal  

1p is to know by acquaintance (only possible to humans).
I conjecture that any statement pertaining to humans containing 1p is TRUE.

3p is to know by description (works for both humans and computers).
I believe that any statement pertaining to computers containing 1p is FALSE.

Consciousness would be to know that you are conscious, or

for a real person, 1p(1p) = TRUE
and saying that he is conscious to others would be 3p(1p) = TRUE
or even (3p(1p(1p))) = TRUE


But a computer cannot experience anything (is blocked from 1p), or

for a computer, 3p (1p) = FALSE (or any statement containing 1p)
but 3p(3p) = TRUE (or any proposition not containing 1p = TRUE)  


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/21/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Bruno Marchal  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-21, 09:56:39 
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life 


Hi John, 


On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote: 


Bruno, 
especially in my identification as responding to relations.  
Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of thinking, 
more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we have no idea. What WE call 
'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE identify it that way. 
I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether she feels like having a 
self? (In cauliflowerese, of course).  


My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self-consciousness, as 
they have the ability to dream, easily realted to the ability to build a 
representation of one self. Then I have enlarged the spectrum up to some 
spiders and the octopi, just by reading a lot about them, looking video. 


But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say I know 
nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to different 
scalings. 


The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different reason (the 
main one is that it is Turing Universal): 


x + 0 = x   
x + s(y) = s(x + y)  


 x *0 = 0 
 x*s(y) = x*y + x


But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that if a 
property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor operation, then it 
is true for all natural numbers. That is the infinity of axioms: 


(F(0)  Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x),  


with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus defined with 
0, s, +, *),  


Then you get L?ianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you and me. 
Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can develop maximal 
awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics retrievable by that 
theology, and the observation and inference on their most probable 
neighborhoods. 


L?ianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create and enlarge 
the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold. 




Bruno 











On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote: 


On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote: 


Hi Bruno Marchal 

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness 
or it cannot perceive its environment. 


Are you sure? 

Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am not sure 
they have self-consciousness. 

Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might come from 
the need of this for the self-movie living creature having some important mass. 

all life is a very fuzzy notion. 

Bruno 









Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/17/2012 
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37 
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life 




On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote: 


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb  wrote: 



If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so how and 
why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to this means 
your ideas are fatally flawed. 



I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted, is not a 
paradigm of efficient design.  Consciousness might just be a side-effect 


But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was dead 
wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a intelligent 
computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't think Darwin was dead wrong. 





Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in the 
evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams 
(computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic. 


Bruno 




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ 

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Jason Resch

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


   I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new type of
 indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error, so there
 was no point in reading about things built on top of that


  From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM
 duplication, you will live both at W and at W


 Yes.

 yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place


 Yes.

  so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first person
 and third person.


 Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if we are
 identical then my first person experience of looking at you is identical to
 your first person experience of looking at me, and both our actions are
 identical for a third person looking at both of us. As long as we're
 identical it's meaningless to talk about 2 conscious beings regardless of
 how many bodies or brains have been duplicated.

 Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but then not
 thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that a noun
 (like a brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has
 not been as long as they are identical; you are treating adjectives as if
 they were nouns and that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused
 by the fact that if 2 identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as
 by forming different memories, then they are no longer identical. And
 finally you are confused by the fact that although they are not each other
 any more after those changes both still have a equal right to call
 themselves Bruno Marchal. After reading these multiple confusions in one
 step of your proof I saw no point in reading more, and I still don't.


John,

I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed after
watching the movie The Prestige and it eventually led me to join this
list.

Unless you consider yourself to be only a single momentary atom of thought,
you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that
you identify with.  You further believe that these thoughts and
consciousness are produced by some activity of your brain.  Unlike Craig,
you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, even if every atom
in your body were separated from every other atom, in principle you could
be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just right, you will
be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.

Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the same
atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are
functionally equivalent.  We could take apart your current atoms, then put
you back together with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness
would continue right where it left off (from before you were obliterated).
 It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we
paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed
it.  From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your
physical incarnation and location has changed.

Assuming you are with me so far, an interesting question emerges: what
happens to your consciousness when duplicated?  Either an atom for atom
replica of yourself is created in two places or your VM image which
contains your brain emulation is copied to two different computers while
paused, and then both are resumed.  Initially, the sensory input to the two
duplicates could be the same, and in a sense they are still the same mind,
just with two instances, but then something interesting happens once
different input is fed to the two instances: they split.  You could say
they split in the same sense as when someone opens the steel box to see
whether the cat is alive or dead.  All the splitting in quantum mechanics
may be the result of our infinite instances discovering/learning different
things about our infinite environments.

Jason



  By the way, it is irrational to stop in the middle of a proof.


 If one of the steps in a proof contains a blunder then it would be
 irrational to keep reading it.

  By assuming a physical reality at the start


 That seems like a pretty damn good place to make an assumption.

   But the physical reality can emerge or appear without a physical
 reality at the start


 Maybe maybe not, but even if you're right that wouldn't make it any less
 real; and maybe physical reality didn't even need to emerge because there
 was no start.


  If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and if I
 make a change in your brain then your conscious state changes too, so I'd
 say that it's a good assumption that consciousness is interlinked with a
 physical object, in fact it's a downright superb assumption.


   But this is easily shown to be false when we assume comp.


 It's not false and I don't need to assume it and I

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-21 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 1:55 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote:

 If there is a top-down effect of the mind on the atoms then there we
 would expect some scientific evidence of this. Evidence would
 constitute, for example, neurons firing when measurements of
 transmembrane potentials, ion concentrations etc. suggest that they
 should not. You claim that such anomalous behaviour of neurons and
 other cells due to consciousness is widespread, yet it has never been
 experimentally observed. Why?


 Hi Stathis,

 How would you set up the experiment? How do you control for an effect
 that may well be ubiquitous? Did you somehow miss the point that
 consciousness can only be observed in 1p? Why are you so insistent on a 3p
 of it?

A top-down effect of consciousness on matter could be inferred if
miraculous events were observed in neurophysiology research. The
consciousness itself cannot be directly observed.

 I don't mean putting an extra module into the brain, I mean putting
 the brain directly into the same configuration it is put into by
 learning the language in the normal way.


 How might we do that? Alter 1 neuron and you might not have the same
 mind.

When you learn something, your brain physically changes. After a year
studying Chinese it goes from configuration SPK-E to configuration
SPK-E+C. If your brain were put directly into configuration SPK-E+C
then you would know Chinese and have a false memory of the year of
learning it.

 In a thought experiment we can say that the imitation stimulates the
 surrounding neurons in the same way as the original. We can even say
 that it does this miraculously. Would such a device *necessarily*
 replicate the consciousness along with the neural impulses, or could
 the two be separated?


 Is the brain strictly a classical system?

No, although the consensus appears to be that quantum effects are not
significant in its functioning. In any case, this does not invalidate
functionalism.

 As I said, technical problems with computers are not relevant to the
 argument. The implant is just a device that has the correct timing of
 neural impulses. Would it necessarily preserve consciousness?


 Let's see. If I ingest psychoactive substances, there is a 1p observable
 effect Is this a circumstance that is different in kind from that
 device?

The psychoactive substances cause a physical change in your brain and
thereby also a psychological change.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 20 Oct 2012, at 07:15, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
wrote:

Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be
deeper, in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the
coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic.

I have no idea what that means, not a clue,

Probably for the same reason that you stop at step 3 in the UD Argument.

You assume a physical reality, and you assume that our consciousness
is some phenomenon related exclusively to some construct (brain,
bodies) in that physical reality.

But once you grasp the first person indeterminacy, and take into
account its many invariance features (they can't distinguish
immediately real, virtual, arithmetical, they can't be aware of
the delays of reconstitution) you can see that comp make the existence
of a physical universe a from of vague wishful thinking kind of
thing, as your future, from your first person points of view will
depend on all the computations going through your actual current
relative state(s).

Comp generalized Everett (on QM) to arithmetic.

No doubt we share deep linear computations. Everett saves comp from
solipism. But QM has to be retrieved from number dreams statistics to
confirms this.

Advantage? The subtlety of arithmetical self-reference makes possible
to distinguish many sorts of points of view, and suggests explanation
for the difference between the qualia and the quanta.

but I do know that Evolution can't select for something it can't see,

OK.

and I do know that Evolution can see intelligence because it
produces behavior.

OK.

Evolution can't see consciousness directly any better than we can,

Plausible.

so if it produced it

No. With comp, consciousness was there before. It just get lost on
relatively coherent sheafs of computational histories.
We share dreams. (a dream is a computation to which a first person
is attributable)

(and it did unless Darwin was dead wrong)

Darwin explains the evolution of species, in an Aristotelian framework.

Comp refutes the Aristotelian framework, and saves the main part of
Darwin, indeed, it generalizes it on a realm where the laws of physics
themselves arises by a process of arithmetical self-selection.

then consciousness MUST be a byproduct of something that it can see.

The contrary, if you say yes to the doctor by betting on comp,
consciously.

I think anybody can see that once he/she/it takes comp seriously and
stay cold rationalist on the subject.

I don't think it is so much more alluring than Everett QM.

Bruno

John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Friday, October 19, 2012 3:29:39 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 17 Oct 2012, at 17:04, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 10:16:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote:

 Two men and two women live together. The woman has a child. 2+2=5


 You mean two men + two women + a baby = five persons. 

 You need the arithmetical 2+2=4, and 4+1 = 5, in your argument.

 Bruno


 I only see that one person plus another person can eventually equal three 
 or more people. 


 With the operation of sexual reproduction, not by the operation of 
 addition. 


Only if you consider the 2+2=5 to be a complex special case and 2+2=4 to be 
a simple general rule. It could just as easily be flipped. I can say 2+2=4 
by the operation of reflexive neurology, and 2+2=5 is an operation of 
multiplication. It depends on what level of description you privilege by 
over-signifying and the consequence that has on the other levels which are 
under-signified. To me, the Bruno view is near-sighted when it comes to 
physics (only sees numbers, substance is disqualified) and far-sighted when 
it comes to numbers (does not question the autonomy of numbers). What is it 
that can tell one number from another? What knows that + is different from 
* and how? Why doesn't arithmetic truth need a meta-arithmetic machine to 
allow it to function (to generate the ontology of 'function' in the first 
place)?

It's all sense. It has to be sense.





 It depends when you start counting and how long it takes you to finish.


 It depends on what we are talking about. Person with sex is not numbers 
 with addition.

 You are just changing definition, not invalidating a proof (the proof that 
 2+2=4, in arithmetic).


I'm not trying to invalidate the proof within one context of sense, I'm 
pointing out that it isn't that simple. There are other contexts of sense 
which reduce differently. 

Craig

 


 Bruno




 Craig
  




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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Saturday, October 20, 2012 1:01:51 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:

  So lets see, a giant junkyard magnet is a devastating logical 
 argument but  a junkyard car crusher is not. Explain to me how that works.


  Because talking about how you want to kill me in an argument about 
 computers is pointless ad hominem venting, but talking about the effect of 
 magnetism on computers in an argument about computers is relevant


 A strong magnetic field will disrupt the operation of a computer and it 
 will disrupt the operation of your brain too, and a junkyard car crusher 
 will disrupt the operation of both as well.


I get your point, but at the same time, we aren't outfitting Apache 
helicopters with giant magnets to immobilize armies of people.

Craig
 


   John K Clark  


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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Oct 20, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  I have no idea what that means, not a clue



 Probably for the same reason that you stop at step 3 in the UD Argument.


Probably. I remember I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of
a new type of indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in
error, so there was no point in reading about things built on top of that;
but I don't remember if that was step 3 or not.

You assume a physical reality,


I assume that if physical reality doesn't exist then either the words
physical or reality or exists are meaningless, and I don't think any
of those words are.


  and you assume that our consciousness is some phenomenon related
 exclusively to some construct (brain, bodies)


If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and if I make a
change in your brain then your conscious state changes too, so I'd say that
it's a good assumption that consciousness is interlinked with a physical
object, in fact it's a downright superb assumption.

   so if it [Evolution] produced it [consciousness]



No. With comp, consciousness was there before.


Well I don't know about you but I don't think my consciousness was there
before Evolution figured out how to make brains, I believe this because I
can't seem to remember events that were going on during the Precambrian.
I've always been a little hazy about what exactly comp meant but I had
the general feeling that I sorta agreed with it, but apparently not.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread Stathis Papaioannou



On Oct 15, 2012, at 4:10 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:


  But since you misunderstand the first assumption you misunderstand the 
  whole argument. 
  
  
  Nope. You misunderstand my argument completely. 
 
 Perhaps I do, but you specifically misunderstand that the argument 
 depends on the assumption that computers don't have consciousness.
 
 No, I do understand that.

Good.

 You 
 also misunderstand (or pretend to) the idea that a brain or computer 
 does not have to know the entire future history of the universe and 
 how it will respond to every situation it may encounter in order to 
 function.
 
 Do you have to know the entire history of how you learned English to read 
 these words? It depends what you mean by know. You don't have to consciously 
 recall learning English, but without that experience, you wouldn't be able to 
 read this. If you had a module implanted in your brain which would allow you 
 to read Chinese, it might give you an acceptable capacity to translate 
 Chinese phonemes and characters, but it would be a generic understanding, not 
 one rooted in decades of human interaction. Do you see the difference? Do you 
 see how words are not only functional data but also names which carry 
 personal significance?

The atoms in my brain don't have to know how to read Chinese. They only need to 
know how to be carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms. The complex behaviour which 
is reading Chinese comes from the interaction of billions of these atoms doing 
their simple thing. If the atoms in my brain were put into a Chinese-reading 
configuration, either through a lot of work learning the language or through 
direct manipulation, then I would be able to understand Chinese.

 What are some equivalently simple, uncontroversial things in 
 what you say that i misunderstand?
 
 You think that I don't get that Fading Qualia is a story about a world in 
 which the brain cannot be substituted, but I do. Chalmers is saying 'OK lets 
 say that's true - how would that be? Would your blue be less and less blue? 
 How could you act normally if you...blah, blah, blah'. I get that. It's 
 crystal clear.
 
 What you don't understand is that this carries a priori assumptions about the 
 nature of consciousness, that it is an end result of a distributed process 
 which is monolithic. I am saying NO, THAT IS NOT HOW IT IS.
 
 Imagine that we had one eye in the front of our heads and one ear in the 
 back, and that the whole of human history has been to debate over whether 
 walking forward means that objects are moving toward you or whether it means 
 changes in relative volume of sounds.
 
 Chalmers is saying, 'if we gradually replaced the eye with parts of the ear, 
 how would our sight gradually change to sound, or would it suddenly switch 
 over?' Since both options seem absurd, then he concludes that anything that 
 is in the front of the head is an eye and everything on the back is an ear, 
 or that everything has both ear and eye potentials.
 
 The MR model is to understand that these two views are not merely substance 
 dual or property dual, they are involuted juxtapositions of each other. The 
 difference between front and back is not merely irreconcilable, it is 
 mutually exclusive by definition in experience. I am not throwing up my hands 
 and saying 'ears can't be eyes because eyes are special', I am positively 
 asserting that there is a way of modeling the eye-ear relation based on an 
 understanding of what time, space, matter, energy, entropy, significance, 
 perception, and participation actually are and how they relate to each other.
 
 The idea that the newly discovered ear-based models out of the back of our 
 head is eventually going to explain the view eye view out of the front is not 
 scientific, it's an ideological faith that I understand to be critically 
 flawed. The evidence is all around us, we have only to interpret it that way 
 rather than to keep updating our description of reality to match the 
 narrowness of our fundamental theory. The theory only works for the back view 
 of the world...it says *nothing* useful about the front view. To the True 
 Disbeliever, this is a sign that we need to double down on the back end view 
 because it's the best chance we have. The thinking is that any other position 
 implies that we throw out the back end view entirely and go back to the dark 
 ages of front end fanatacism. I am not suggesting a compromise, I propose a 
 complete overhaul in which we start not from the front and move back or back 
 and move front, but start from the split and see how it can be understood as 
 double knot - a fold of folds.

I'm sorry, but this whole passage is a non sequitur as far as the fading qualia 
thought experiment goes. You have to explain what you think would happen if 
part of your brain were replaced with a functional equivalent. A functional 
equivalent would stimulate the remaining neurons the same as the part that

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Saturday, October 20, 2012 1:47:28 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:



 On Oct 15, 2012, at 4:10 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote:


  But since you misunderstand the first assumption you misunderstand the 
  whole argument. 
  
  
  Nope. You misunderstand my argument completely. 

 Perhaps I do, but you specifically misunderstand that the argument 
 depends on the assumption that computers don't have consciousness. 


 No, I do understand that.


 Good.

 You 
 also misunderstand (or pretend to) the idea that a brain or computer 
 does not have to know the entire future history of the universe and 
 how it will respond to every situation it may encounter in order to 
 function. 


 Do you have to know the entire history of how you learned English to read 
 these words? It depends what you mean by know. You don't have to 
 consciously recall learning English, but without that experience, you 
 wouldn't be able to read this. If you had a module implanted in your brain 
 which would allow you to read Chinese, it might give you an acceptable 
 capacity to translate Chinese phonemes and characters, but it would be a 
 generic understanding, not one rooted in decades of human interaction. Do 
 you see the difference? Do you see how words are not only functional data 
 but also names which carry personal significance?


 The atoms in my brain don't have to know how to read Chinese. They only 
 need to know how to be carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms. The complex 
 behaviour which is reading Chinese comes from the interaction of billions 
 of these atoms doing their simple thing. 


I don't think that is true. The other way around makes just as much sense 
of not more: Reading Chinese is a simple behavior which drives the behavior 
of billions of atoms to do a complex interaction. To me, it has to be both 
bottom-up and top-down. It seems completely arbitrary prejudice to presume 
one over the other just because we think that we understand the bottom-up 
so well.

Once you can see how it is the case that it must be both bottom-up and 
top-down at the same time, the next step is to see that there is no 
possibility for it to be a cause-effect relationship, but rather a dual 
aspect ontological relation. Nothing is translating the functions of 
neurons into a Cartesian theater of experience - there is nowhere to put it 
in the tissue of the brain and there is no evidence of a translation from 
neural protocols to sensorimotive protocols - they are clearly the same 
thing. 
 

 If the atoms in my brain were put into a Chinese-reading configuration, 
 either through a lot of work learning the language or through direct 
 manipulation, then I would be able to understand Chinese.


It's understandable to assume that, but no I don't think it's like that. 
You can't transplant a language into a brain instantaneously because there 
is no personal history of association. Your understanding of language is 
not a lookup table in space, it is made out of you. It's like if you walked 
around with Google translator in your brain. You could enter words and 
phrases and turn them into you language, but you would never know the 
language first hand. The knowledge would be impersonal - accessible, but 
not woven into your proprietary sense.
 


 What are some equivalently simple, uncontroversial things in 
 what you say that i misunderstand? 


 You think that I don't get that Fading Qualia is a story about a world in 
 which the brain cannot be substituted, but I do. Chalmers is saying 'OK 
 lets say that's true - how would that be? Would your blue be less and less 
 blue? How could you act normally if you...blah, blah, blah'. I get that. 
 It's crystal clear.

 What you don't understand is that this carries a priori assumptions about 
 the nature of consciousness, that it is an end result of a distributed 
 process which is monolithic. I am saying NO, THAT IS NOT HOW IT IS.

 Imagine that we had one eye in the front of our heads and one ear in the 
 back, and that the whole of human history has been to debate over whether 
 walking forward means that objects are moving toward you or whether it 
 means changes in relative volume of sounds.

 Chalmers is saying, 'if we gradually replaced the eye with parts of the 
 ear, how would our sight gradually change to sound, or would it suddenly 
 switch over?' Since both options seem absurd, then he concludes that 
 anything that is in the front of the head is an eye and everything on the 
 back is an ear, or that everything has both ear and eye potentials.

 The MR model is to understand that these two views are not merely 
 substance dual or property dual, they are involuted juxtapositions of each 
 other. The difference between front and back is not merely irreconcilable, 
 it is mutually exclusive by definition in experience. I am not throwing up 
 my hands and saying 'ears can't be eyes because eyes are special', I am 
 positively asserting that there is a

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread John Mikes

Bruno,
especially in my identification as responding to relations.
Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of
thinking, more so than the average (animalic?) mind. - OR: we have no
idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE
identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether
she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course).
JM

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness
or it cannot perceive its environment.

Are you sure?

Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am not
sure they have self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might come
from the need of this for the self-movie living creature having some
important mass.

all life is a very fuzzy notion.

Bruno

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/17/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen

- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life

On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb wrote:

If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so
how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to
this means your ideas are fatally flawed.

I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw. Evolution, as you've noted, is not a
paradigm of efficient design. Consciousness might just be a side-effect

But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was
dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a
intelligent computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't think Darwin
was dead wrong.

Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in
the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams
(computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-20 Thread Stephen P. King


On 10/20/2012 5:16 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno,
especially in my identification as responding to relations.
Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of 
thinking, more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we have no 
idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute 
because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to 
clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of 
course).

JM


If we where cauliflowers, we would have no concept of what it would 
be like to be human or, maybe, that humans even exist!




On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be 
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness
or it cannot perceive its environment.


Are you sure?

Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I
am not sure they have self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and
might come from the need of this for the self-movie living
creature having some important mass.

all life is a very fuzzy notion.

Bruno








Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net
10/17/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life




On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb  wrote:


If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution
can't see it, so how and why did Evolution produce it?
The fact that you have no answer to this means your
ideas are fatally flawed.


I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've
noted, is not a paradigm of efficient design.
 Consciousness might just be a side-effect


But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless
Darwin was dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of
intelligence, so a intelligent computer must be a conscious
computer. And I don't think Darwin was dead wrong.





Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be
deeper, in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics
from the coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in
arithmetic.


Bruno



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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-19 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness
or it cannot perceive its environment.


Are you sure?

Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am  
not sure they have self-consciousness.


Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might  
come from the need of this for the self-movie living creature having  
some important mass.


all life is a very fuzzy notion.

Bruno









Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/17/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life




On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb  wrote:


If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it,  
so how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no  
answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed.


I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted, is  
not a paradigm of efficient design.  Consciousness might just be a  
side-effect


But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin  
was dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence,  
so a intelligent computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't  
think Darwin was dead wrong.






Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper,  
in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the  
coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic.



Bruno




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-19 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 17 Oct 2012, at 17:04, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 10:16:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Two men and two women live together. The woman has a child. 2+2=5

You mean two men + two women + a baby = five persons.

You need the arithmetical 2+2=4, and 4+1 = 5, in your argument.

Bruno

I only see that one person plus another person can eventually equal
three or more people.

With the operation of sexual reproduction, not by the operation of
addition.

It depends when you start counting and how long it takes you to
finish.

It depends on what we are talking about. Person with sex is not
numbers with addition.

You are just changing definition, not invalidating a proof (the proof
that 2+2=4, in arithmetic).

Bruno

Craig

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-19 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 So lets see, a giant junkyard magnet is a devastating logical argument
 but  a junkyard car crusher is not. Explain to me how that works.


  Because talking about how you want to kill me in an argument about
 computers is pointless ad hominem venting, but talking about the effect of
 magnetism on computers in an argument about computers is relevant


A strong magnetic field will disrupt the operation of a computer and it
will disrupt the operation of your brain too, and a junkyard car crusher
will disrupt the operation of both as well.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-19 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in
 the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams
 (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic.


I have no idea what that means, not a clue, but I do know that Evolution
can't select for something it can't see, and I do know that Evolution can
see intelligence because it produces behavior.  Evolution can't see
consciousness directly any better than we can, so if it produced it (and it
did unless Darwin was dead wrong) then consciousness MUST be a byproduct of
something that it can see.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-17 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net  
wrote:


   If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see  
it, so how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have  
no answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed.


 I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted,  
is not a paradigm of efficient design.  Consciousness might just be  
a side-effect


But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin  
was dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence,  
so a intelligent computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't  
think Darwin was dead wrong.



Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in  
the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent  
dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-17 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Two men and two women live together. The woman has a child. 2+2=5


You mean two men + two women + a baby = five persons.

You need the arithmetical 2+2=4, and 4+1 = 5, in your argument.

Bruno




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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-17 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 10:16:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote:

 Two men and two women live together. The woman has a child. 2+2=5


 You mean two men + two women + a baby = five persons. 

 You need the arithmetical 2+2=4, and 4+1 = 5, in your argument.

 Bruno


I only see that one person plus another person can eventually equal three 
or more people. It depends when you start counting and how long it takes 
you to finish.

Craig
 




 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-17 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 16 Oct 2012, at 21:55, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:
corn starch is not a fluid (newtinian or not). It is a solid and
when dissolved in water (or whatever?) it makes a N.N.fluid -
My question about it's 'live, or not' status is:

does it provide METABOLISM and REPAIR ?
I doubt it.
Do not misunderstand me, please: this is not my word about :LIFE
it pertains to the LIVE STATUS (process) which - according to Robert
Rosen's brilliant distinction - shows a relying upon environmental
(material??) support for its substinence (called metabolism) and a
mechanism to repair damages that occur in the process of being alive.

I can use such provisory definition of carbon-based life. But I can
conceive other form of life. And for life, I am large, it includes
anything which adds and multiplies, basically.

Minds with chemistry impediment look differently at things.

Certainly. I hope you didn't believe I meant those Non Newtonian
things as being alive. They just *look*, to me, as amazingly alive,
only. They are baby zombies (joke).

Bruno

John M

PS: I could not enjoy the video in the URL: I got a warning to close
it down because it slows down my browser (to 0).J

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Craig Weinberg
whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

On Friday, October 12, 2012 10:23:57 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 12 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote:

They are certainly cool looking and biomorphic. The question I have
is, at what point do they begin to have experiences...or do you
think that those blobs have experiences already?

Would it give them more of a human experience if an oscillating
smiley-face/frowny-face algorithm were added graphically into the
center of each blob?

Here is a deterministic simple phenomenon looking amazingly
alive (non-newtonian fluid):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoTKXXNQIU

Is it alive? That question does not make sense for me. Yes with some
definition, no with other one. Unlike consciousness or intelligence
life is not a definite concept for me. I use usually the definition
has a reproductive cycle. But this makes cigarettes and stars alive.
No problem for me.

Bruno

The good news is, after this operation you'll be every bit as alive
as a cigarette is.

There are some cool videos out there of cymatic animation like that.
All that it really tells me is that there are a limited number of
morphological themes in the universe, not that those themes are
positively linked to any particular private phenomenology. They are
producing those patterns with a particular acoustic signal, but we
could model it mathematically and see the same pattern on a video
screen without any acoustic signal at all. Same thing happens when
we model the behaviors of a conscious mind. It looks similar from a
distance, but that's all.

Craig

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-17 Thread Roger Clough

Hi Bruno Marchal  

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness
or it cannot perceive its environment.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/17/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Bruno Marchal  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37 
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life 




On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote: 


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb  wrote: 


   If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so how 
  and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to this 
  means your ideas are fatally flawed.  

 I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted, is not a 
 paradigm of efficient design.  Consciousness might just be a side-effect  

But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was dead 
wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a intelligent 
computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't think Darwin was dead wrong. 





Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in the 
evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams 
(computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic. 


Bruno 




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-16 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:



  I know you don't have a proof of the Goldbach Conjecture. Well OK, I
 don't know that with absolute certainty, maybe you have a proof but are
 keeping it secret for some strange reason, but my knowledge is more than
 diddly squat because I very strongly suspect you have no such proof and I'm
 probably right. But I do know for certain that you don't have a valid proof
 that 2+2=5 or a way to directly detect consciousness in any mind other than
 your own.


 Then you are claiming to know about our consciousness instead of just
 your own.


I am claiming that you don't possess a valid proof that 2+2=5 because there
is no such proof to possess.


  Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


  Let's see how you fare in a junkyard car crusher.


  translation - I concede, I have no argument.


So lets see, a giant junkyard magnet is a devastating logical argument
but  a junkyard car crusher is not. Explain to me how that works.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-16 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so
 how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to
 this means your ideas are fatally flawed.


  I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted, is not
 a paradigm of efficient design.  Consciousness might just be a side-effect


But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was dead
wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a intelligent
computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't think Darwin was dead
wrong.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-16 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 12:13:55 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:



 On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:



  I know you don't have a proof of the Goldbach Conjecture. Well OK, I 
 don't know that with absolute certainty, maybe you have a proof but are 
 keeping it secret for some strange reason, but my knowledge is more than 
 diddly squat because I very strongly suspect you have no such proof and I'm 
 probably right. But I do know for certain that you don't have a valid proof 
 that 2+2=5 or a way to directly detect consciousness in any mind other than 
 your own.


 Then you are claiming to know about our consciousness instead of just 
 your own.


 I am claiming that you don't possess a valid proof that 2+2=5 because 
 there is no such proof to possess.


Two men and two women live together. The woman has a child. 2+2=5

 

   

  Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


  Let's see how you fare in a junkyard car crusher.


  translation - I concede, I have no argument.


 So lets see, a giant junkyard magnet is a devastating logical argument 
 but  a junkyard car crusher is not. Explain to me how that works.


Because talking about how you want to kill me in an argument about 
computers is pointless ad hominem venting, but talking about the effect of 
magnetism on computers in an argument about computers is relevant. I get 
it, my views upset you. You should discuss that with a professional.

Craig
 


   John K Clark


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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-16 Thread meekerdb

On 10/16/2012 9:37 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so
how and
why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to this
means your
ideas are fatally flawed.

I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw. Evolution, as you've noted, is not a
paradigm
of efficient design. Consciousness might just be a side-effect

But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was dead wrong
consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a intelligent computer must be a
conscious computer.

But it might be a side-effect of the particular way in which evolution implemented human
intelligence. If we created an artificial intelligence that, for example had a module for
filtering and storing information about significant events that was separate from the
language/communication module then that AI might not be conscious in the way people are.
I agree that it would be conscious in *some* way, but different ways of processing and
storing information, even though they produce roughly the same intelligent behaviour,
might produce qualitatively different consciousness. In fact I expect that cuttlefish,
who are social and communicate by producing color patterns on their body, have a different
kind of 'stream of consciousness' and if they evolved to be as intelligent as humans they
would still have this qualitative difference in consciousness, somewhat as people with
synasthesia do but more so.

Brent

Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-16 Thread John Mikes

Bruno:
corn starch is not a fluid (newtinian or not). It is a solid and when
dissolved in water (or whatever?) it makes a N.N.fluid -My question
about it's 'live, or not' status is:
does it provide METABOLISM  and  REPAIR ?
I doubt it.
Do not misunderstand me, please: this is not my word about :LIFE it
pertains to the LIVE STATUS (process) which - according to Robert Rosen's
brilliant distinction - shows a relying upon environmental (material??)
support for its substinence (called metabolism) and a mechanism to repair
damages that occur in the process of being alive.

Minds with chemistry impediment look differently at things.

John M

PS: I could not enjoy the video in the URL: I got a warning to close it
down because it slows down my browser (to 0).J

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:



 On Friday, October 12, 2012 10:23:57 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 12 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  They are certainly cool looking and biomorphic. The question I have
  is, at what point do they begin to have experiences...or do you
  think that those blobs have experiences already?
 
  Would it give them more of a human experience if an oscillating
  smiley-face/frowny-face algorithm were added graphically into the
  center of each blob?


 Here is a  deterministic simple phenomenon looking amazingly
 alive (non-newtonian fluid):

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?**v=3zoTKXXNQIUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoTKXXNQIU

 Is it alive? That question does not make sense for me. Yes with some
 definition, no with other one. Unlike consciousness or intelligence
 life is not a definite concept for me. I use usually the definition
 has a reproductive cycle. But this makes cigarettes and stars alive.
 No problem for me.

 Bruno


 The good news is, after this operation you'll be every bit as alive as a
 cigarette is.

 There are some cool videos out there of cymatic animation like that. All
 that it really tells me is that there are a limited number of morphological
 themes in the universe, not that those themes are positively linked to any
 particular private phenomenology. They are producing those patterns with a
 particular acoustic signal, but we could model it mathematically and see
 the same pattern on a video screen without any acoustic signal at all. Same
 thing happens when we model the behaviors of a conscious mind. It looks
 similar from a distance, but that's all.

 Craig





 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-15 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

  Since we know that our consciousness


You don't know diddly squat about our consciousness, you only know about
your consciousness; assuming of course that you are conscious, if not then
you don't even know that.

 is exquisitely sensitive to particular masses of specific chemicals, yet
 relatively tolerant of other kinds of chemical changes,


And a computer is exquisitely sensitive to particular voltages and not
sensitive at all to other voltages that don't make the threshold.

 it suggests that we should strongly suspect that COMP is a fantasy.


And so the computer strongly suspects that biological consciousness is a
fantasy.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-15 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:


  I think he [Chambers] goes wrong by assuming a priori that consciousness
 is functional,


I've asked you this question dozens of times but you have never coherently
answered it: If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see
it, so how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no
answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed.

 that personal consciousness is an assembly of sub-personal parts which
 can be isolated and reproduced based on exterior behavior. I don't assume
 that at all.


And I've asked you another question that you also have no answer for: If we
can deduce nothing about consciousness from behavior then why do you
believe that your fellow human beings are conscious when they are behaving
as if they are awake, and why do you believe that they are not conscious
when they are sleeping or undergoing anesthesia or behaving as if they were
dead and rotting in the ground?

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Monday, October 15, 2012 12:14:55 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote:

   Since we know that our consciousness


 You don't know diddly squat about our consciousness, you only know about 
 your consciousness; assuming of course that you are conscious, if not then 
 you don't even know that.


If that were true, then you don't know diddly squat about what I know. You 
can't have it both ways. Either it is possible that we know things or it is 
not. You can't claim to be omniscient about my ignorance. 
 


  is exquisitely sensitive to particular masses of specific chemicals, yet 
 relatively tolerant of other kinds of chemical changes,


 And a computer is exquisitely sensitive to particular voltages and not 
 sensitive at all to other voltages that don't make the threshold. 


Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.
 


  it suggests that we should strongly suspect that COMP is a fantasy.


 And so the computer strongly suspects that biological consciousness is a 
 fantasy. 


Maybe the doorknob thinks that hands aren't alive too? Maybe you can talk 
yourself into believing that sophistry, but I'm not buying it.

Craig 


   John K Clark

  

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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Monday, October 15, 2012 12:38:30 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:
  

   I think he [Chambers] goes wrong by assuming a priori that 
 consciousness is functional,


 I've asked you this question dozens of times but you have never coherently 
 answered it: If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see 
 it, so how and why did Evolution produce it? 


Evolution did not produce consciousness. Consciousness produced evolution. 
Not human consciousness, but sense. I have said this repeatedly. 

 

 The fact that you have no answer to this means your ideas are fatally 
 flawed. 


I keep answering it. You keep putting your fingers in your ears.
 


  that personal consciousness is an assembly of sub-personal parts which 
 can be isolated and reproduced based on exterior behavior. I don't assume 
 that at all. 


 And I've asked you another question that you also have no answer for: If 
 we can deduce nothing about consciousness from behavior then why do you 
 believe that your fellow human beings are conscious when they are behaving 
 as if they are awake, and why do you believe that they are not conscious 
 when they are sleeping or undergoing anesthesia or behaving as if they were 
 dead and rotting in the ground?  


We can deduce a great deal about the consciousness of things which are 
similar to ourselves. The more distant and unrelated a phenomenon is to 
ourselves, the less certain we can be about what the experience associated 
with it might be. It's not  a question of conscious vs unconscious, it is a 
question of the range of qualities of consciousness. Humans have a broad 
range.

Craig


   John K Clark






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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-15 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:



 You don't know diddly squat about our consciousness, you only know
 about your consciousness; assuming of course that you are conscious, if not
 then you don't even know that.


 If that were true, then you don't know diddly squat about what I know.


Not true, I know you don't have a proof of the Goldbach Conjecture. Well
OK, I don't know that with absolute certainty, maybe you have a proof but
are keeping it secret for some strange reason, but my knowledge is more
than diddly squat because I very strongly suspect you have no such proof
and I'm probably right. But I do know for certain that you don't have a
valid proof that 2+2=5 or a way to directly detect consciousness in any
mind other than your own.

You can't have it both ways. Either it is possible that we know things or
 it is not.


That is most certainly true, it is possible to know things, it's just not
possible to know all things.

 You can't claim to be omniscient about my ignorance.


It's almost as if you're claiming your ignorance is vast, well I admit I am
not omniscient about your ignorance, no doubt you are ignorant about things
that I don't know you are ignorant of.

 Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


Let's see how you fare in a junkyard car crusher.

  John K Clark

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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Monday, October 15, 2012 1:02:05 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:



 On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:



 You don't know diddly squat about our consciousness, you only know 
 about your consciousness; assuming of course that you are conscious, if not 
 then you don't even know that.


 If that were true, then you don't know diddly squat about what I know. 


 Not true, I know you don't have a proof of the Goldbach Conjecture. Well 
 OK, I don't know that with absolute certainty, maybe you have a proof but 
 are keeping it secret for some strange reason, but my knowledge is more 
 than diddly squat because I very strongly suspect you have no such proof 
 and I'm probably right. But I do know for certain that you don't have a 
 valid proof that 2+2=5 or a way to directly detect consciousness in any 
 mind other than your own.


Then you are claiming to know about our consciousness instead of just 
your own. If you can do that, why can't I? The difference is that I don't 
put some artificial constraint on what you can or can't know. I let 
consciousness be what it actually is, rather than what it needs to be to 
fit into my inherited worldview.
 


 You can't have it both ways. Either it is possible that we know things or 
 it is not.


 That is most certainly true, it is possible to know things, it's just not 
 possible to know all things.  

   You can't claim to be omniscient about my ignorance. 


 It's almost as if you're claiming your ignorance is vast, well I admit I 
 am not omniscient about your ignorance, no doubt you are ignorant about 
 things that I don't know you are ignorant of. 


Whatever you can know about what I know, I can also know about what you 
know.
 


  Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


 Let's see how you fare in a junkyard car crusher.


translation - I concede, I have no argument.

Craig
 


   John K Clark 

  


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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-15 Thread meekerdb


On 10/15/2012 9:38 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com 
mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:


 I think he [Chambers] goes wrong by assuming a priori that consciousness 
is
functional,


I've asked you this question dozens of times but you have never coherently answered it: 
If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so how and why did 
Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to this means your ideas are 
fatally flawed.


I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw.  Evolution, as you've noted, is not a paradigm of 
efficient design.  Consciousness might just be a side-effect of using some brain language 
modules as filters for remembering more important events, while forgetting most of them.  
This would comport with Julian Jaynes idea of the origin of consciousness.


Bretn

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-15 Thread meekerdb


On 10/15/2012 9:41 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


And a computer is exquisitely sensitive to particular voltages and not 
sensitive at
all to other voltages that don't make the threshold.


Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


Probably better than you will fare plugged into a 120V outlet.  :-)

Brent

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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Monday, October 15, 2012 2:42:33 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 10/15/2012 9:41 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  And a computer is exquisitely sensitive to particular voltages and not 
 sensitive at all to other voltages that don't make the threshold. 
  

 Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


 Probably better than you will fare plugged into a 120V outlet.  :-)


Let's see who fares better in a swimming pool.

Craig
 


 Brent
  

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-15 Thread meekerdb


On 10/15/2012 11:48 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Monday, October 15, 2012 2:42:33 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/15/2012 9:41 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


And a computer is exquisitely sensitive to particular voltages and not
sensitive at all to other voltages that don't make the threshold.


Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


Probably better than you will fare plugged into a 120V outlet.  :-)


Let's see who fares better in a swimming pool.


I'll accept that as an admission that you've run out of cogent arguments.

Brent

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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Monday, October 15, 2012 3:09:54 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 10/15/2012 11:48 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Monday, October 15, 2012 2:42:33 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 

  On 10/15/2012 9:41 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  And a computer is exquisitely sensitive to particular voltages and not 
 sensitive at all to other voltages that don't make the threshold. 
  

 Let's see how computer fares under a giant junkyard magnet.


 Probably better than you will fare plugged into a 120V outlet.  :-)
  

 Let's see who fares better in a swimming pool.
  

 I'll accept that as an admission that you've run out of cogent arguments.


No, I'm just making the point that human beings have a much more robust and 
complex relation to physical conditions. Computers reveal their rigidity 
and lack of sentience in their relatively uniform relation to temperature, 
chemicals, etc.

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-14 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Sunday, October 14, 2012 1:04:54 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 2:59 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 

  No, he does NOT assume this. He assumes the opposite: that 
  consciousness is a property of the brain and CANNOT be reproduced by 
  reproducing the behaviour in another substrate. 
  
  
  I'm not talking about what the structure of the thought experiment 
 assumes, 
  I am talking about what David Chalmers himself assumed before coming up 
 with 
  the paper. We have been over this before. I'm not saying I disagree with 
 the 
  reasoning of the thought experiment, I am saying that I see a mistake in 
 the 
  initial assumptions which invalidate the thought experiment in the first 
  place. 

 The validity of a proof is not dependent on the beliefs, habits or 
 psychology of its author! 


If someone sets out to estimate how many angels can fit on the head of a 
pin, you are disallowing that we can question the existence of angels.
 


  But since you misunderstand the first assumption you misunderstand the 
  whole argument. 
  
  
  Nope. You misunderstand my argument completely. 

 Perhaps I do, but you specifically misunderstand that the argument 
 depends on the assumption that computers don't have consciousness. 


No, I do understand that.
 

 You 
 also misunderstand (or pretend to) the idea that a brain or computer 
 does not have to know the entire future history of the universe and 
 how it will respond to every situation it may encounter in order to 
 function. 


Do you have to know the entire history of how you learned English to read 
these words? It depends what you mean by know. You don't have to 
consciously recall learning English, but without that experience, you 
wouldn't be able to read this. If you had a module implanted in your brain 
which would allow you to read Chinese, it might give you an acceptable 
capacity to translate Chinese phonemes and characters, but it would be a 
generic understanding, not one rooted in decades of human interaction. Do 
you see the difference? Do you see how words are not only functional data 
but also names which carry personal significance?
 

 What are some equivalently simple, uncontroversial things in 
 what you say that i misunderstand? 


You think that I don't get that Fading Qualia is a story about a world in 
which the brain cannot be substituted, but I do. Chalmers is saying 'OK 
lets say that's true - how would that be? Would your blue be less and less 
blue? How could you act normally if you...blah, blah, blah'. I get that. 
It's crystal clear.

What you don't understand is that this carries a priori assumptions about 
the nature of consciousness, that it is an end result of a distributed 
process which is monolithic. I am saying NO, THAT IS NOT HOW IT IS.

Imagine that we had one eye in the front of our heads and one ear in the 
back, and that the whole of human history has been to debate over whether 
walking forward means that objects are moving toward you or whether it 
means changes in relative volume of sounds.

Chalmers is saying, 'if we gradually replaced the eye with parts of the 
ear, how would our sight gradually change to sound, or would it suddenly 
switch over?' Since both options seem absurd, then he concludes that 
anything that is in the front of the head is an eye and everything on the 
back is an ear, or that everything has both ear and eye potentials.

The MR model is to understand that these two views are not merely substance 
dual or property dual, they are involuted juxtapositions of each other. The 
difference between front and back is not merely irreconcilable, it is 
mutually exclusive by definition in experience. I am not throwing up my 
hands and saying 'ears can't be eyes because eyes are special', I am 
positively asserting that there is a way of modeling the eye-ear relation 
based on an understanding of what time, space, matter, energy, entropy, 
significance, perception, and participation actually are and how they 
relate to each other.

The idea that the newly discovered ear-based models out of the back of our 
head is eventually going to explain the view eye view out of the front is 
not scientific, it's an ideological faith that I understand to be 
critically flawed. The evidence is all around us, we have only to interpret 
it that way rather than to keep updating our description of reality to 
match the narrowness of our fundamental theory. The theory only works for 
the back view of the world...it says *nothing* useful about the front view. 
To the True Disbeliever, this is a sign that we need to double down on the 
back end view because it's the best chance we have. The thinking is that 
any other position implies that we throw out the back end view entirely and 
go back to the dark ages of front end fanatacism. I am not suggesting a 
compromise, I propose a complete overhaul in which we start not from the 
front and move back or back and

Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Friday, October 12, 2012 10:23:57 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 12 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  They are certainly cool looking and biomorphic. The question I have   
  is, at what point do they begin to have experiences...or do you   
  think that those blobs have experiences already? 
  
  Would it give them more of a human experience if an oscillating   
  smiley-face/frowny-face algorithm were added graphically into the   
  center of each blob? 


 Here is a  deterministic simple phenomenon looking amazingly   
 alive (non-newtonian fluid): 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoTKXXNQIU 

 Is it alive? That question does not make sense for me. Yes with some   
 definition, no with other one. Unlike consciousness or intelligence   
 life is not a definite concept for me. I use usually the definition   
 has a reproductive cycle. But this makes cigarettes and stars alive.   
 No problem for me. 

 Bruno 


The good news is, after this operation you'll be every bit as alive as a 
cigarette is.

There are some cool videos out there of cymatic animation like that. All 
that it really tells me is that there are a limited number of morphological 
themes in the universe, not that those themes are positively linked to any 
particular private phenomenology. They are producing those patterns with a 
particular acoustic signal, but we could model it mathematically and see 
the same pattern on a video screen without any acoustic signal at all. Same 
thing happens when we model the behaviors of a conscious mind. It looks 
similar from a distance, but that's all.

Craig

 



 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ 





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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Friday, October 12, 2012 4:42:56 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 05:50:11AM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
  They are certainly cool looking and biomorphic. The question I have is, 
 at 
  what point do they begin to have experiences...or do you think that 
 those 
  blobs have experiences already? 
  
  Would it give them more of a human experience if an oscillating 
  smiley-face/frowny-face algorithm were added graphically into the center 
 of 
  each blob? 
  
  Craig 

 Assuming this system exhibits universality like the original GoL, and 
 assuming COMP, then some patterns will exhibit consciousness. However, 
 the patterns will no doubt be astronomical in size. The movies you see 
 here would be like taking an electron microscopic movie of the inner 
 workings of part of one cell in the human body. 


Unlike part of a human cell though, they are just an optical presentation 
with no mass or chemical composition. 

Craig
 


 I was more struck by the apparent similarity of the movie to the formation 
 of 
 bilipid membranes. 

 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  



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Re: Continuous Game of Life

2012-10-13 Thread Russell Standish

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 02:11:59PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:
 
 
 On Friday, October 12, 2012 4:42:56 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote:
  Assuming this system exhibits universality like the original GoL, and 
  assuming COMP, then some patterns will exhibit consciousness. However, 
  the patterns will no doubt be astronomical in size. The movies you see 
  here would be like taking an electron microscopic movie of the inner 
  workings of part of one cell in the human body. 
 
 
 Unlike part of a human cell though, they are just an optical presentation 
 with no mass or chemical composition. 
 
 Craig

I know you don't believe in COMP, but assuming COMP (I am open-minded
on the topic), mass and chemical composition are irrelevant to
consciousness. 

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Saturday, October 13, 2012 7:41:10 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 02:11:59PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
  
  
  On Friday, October 12, 2012 4:42:56 PM UTC-4, Russell Standish wrote: 
   Assuming this system exhibits universality like the original GoL, and 
   assuming COMP, then some patterns will exhibit consciousness. However, 
   the patterns will no doubt be astronomical in size. The movies you see 
   here would be like taking an electron microscopic movie of the inner 
   workings of part of one cell in the human body. 
   
  
  Unlike part of a human cell though, they are just an optical 
 presentation 
  with no mass or chemical composition. 
  
  Craig 

 I know you don't believe in COMP, but assuming COMP (I am open-minded 
 on the topic), mass and chemical composition are irrelevant to 
 consciousness. 


Since we know that our consciousness is exquisitely sensitive to particular 
masses of specific chemicals, yet relatively tolerant of other kinds of 
chemical changes, it suggests that we should strongly suspect that COMP is 
a fantasy.

Craig
 


 Cheers 

 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  



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Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Russell Standish
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 I know you don't believe in COMP, but assuming COMP (I am open-minded
 on the topic), mass and chemical composition are irrelevant to
 consciousness.

Chalmers' fading qualia argument purports to prove the
substrate-independence of consciousness.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 Since we know that our consciousness is exquisitely sensitive to particular
 masses of specific chemicals, yet relatively tolerant of other kinds of
 chemical changes, it suggests that we should strongly suspect that COMP is a
 fantasy.

That proves nothing. Any machine will be sensitive to small physical
changes of one kind and tolerant of other changes. If you introduce a
little bit of saline into the brain nothing will happen, if you
introduce inside an integrated circuit it will destroy it.


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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Saturday, October 13, 2012 7:54:44 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Russell Standish 
 li...@hpcoders.com.au javascript: wrote: 

  I know you don't believe in COMP, but assuming COMP (I am open-minded 
  on the topic), mass and chemical composition are irrelevant to 
  consciousness. 

 Chalmers' fading qualia argument purports to prove the 
 substrate-independence of consciousness. 


Fading qualia is the only argument of Chalmers' that I disagree with. It's 
a natural mistake to make, but I think he goes wrong by assuming a priori 
that consciousness is functional, i.e. that personal consciousness is an 
assembly of sub-personal parts which can be isolated and reproduced based 
on exterior behavior. I don't assume that at all. I suspect the opposite 
case, that in fact any level of personal consciousness - be it 
sub-personal-reflex, personal-intentional, or 
super-signifying-synchronistic cannot be modeled by the impersonal views 
from third person perspectives. The impersonal (micro, meso, macrocosm) is 
based on public extension, space, and quantifiable lengths, while the 
personal is based on private intention, time, and qualitative oscillation. 
Each layer of the personal relates to all of the impersonal layers in a 
different way, so that you can't necessarily replace a person with a 
sculpture and expect there to still be a person there - even if the 
sculpture seems extremely convincing to us from the outside appearance. My 
prediction is that rather than fading qualia, we would simply see 
increasing pathology, psychosis, dementia, coma, and death.

Craig



 -- 
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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Saturday, October 13, 2012 8:05:26 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 

  Since we know that our consciousness is exquisitely sensitive to 
 particular 
  masses of specific chemicals, yet relatively tolerant of other kinds of 
  chemical changes, it suggests that we should strongly suspect that COMP 
 is a 
  fantasy. 

 That proves nothing. Any machine will be sensitive to small physical 
 changes of one kind and tolerant of other changes. If you introduce a 
 little bit of saline into the brain nothing will happen, if you 
 introduce inside an integrated circuit it will destroy it. 


But if you introduce digital saline into a program, even if there is an 
effect that we can imagine is destruction, we can just restore from a 
backup. No actual destruction has taken place. The question of COMP deals 
not with physical computing devices versus biological organisms, but logic 
which is independent of all forms of matter, energy, space, and time.

Craig
 



 -- 
 Stathis Papaioannou 


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Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 Fading qualia is the only argument of Chalmers' that I disagree with. It's a
 natural mistake to make, but I think he goes wrong by assuming a priori that
 consciousness is functional, i.e. that personal consciousness is an assembly
 of sub-personal parts which can be isolated and reproduced based on exterior
 behavior.

No, he does NOT assume this. He assumes the opposite: that
consciousness is a property of the brain and CANNOT be reproduced by
reproducing the behaviour in another substrate.

 I don't assume that at all. I suspect the opposite case, that in
 fact any level of personal consciousness - be it sub-personal-reflex,
 personal-intentional, or super-signifying-synchronistic cannot be modeled by
 the impersonal views from third person perspectives. The impersonal (micro,
 meso, macrocosm) is based on public extension, space, and quantifiable
 lengths, while the personal is based on private intention, time, and
 qualitative oscillation. Each layer of the personal relates to all of the
 impersonal layers in a different way, so that you can't necessarily replace
 a person with a sculpture and expect there to still be a person there - even
 if the sculpture seems extremely convincing to us from the outside
 appearance. My prediction is that rather than fading qualia, we would simply
 see increasing pathology, psychosis, dementia, coma, and death.

But since you misunderstand the first assumption you misunderstand the
whole argument.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Continuous Game of Life



On Saturday, October 13, 2012 9:05:58 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 

  Fading qualia is the only argument of Chalmers' that I disagree with. 
 It's a 
  natural mistake to make, but I think he goes wrong by assuming a priori 
 that 
  consciousness is functional, i.e. that personal consciousness is an 
 assembly 
  of sub-personal parts which can be isolated and reproduced based on 
 exterior 
  behavior. 

 No, he does NOT assume this. He assumes the opposite: that 
 consciousness is a property of the brain and CANNOT be reproduced by 
 reproducing the behaviour in another substrate. 


I'm not talking about what the structure of the thought experiment assumes, 
I am talking about what David Chalmers himself assumed before coming up 
with the paper. We have been over this before. I'm not saying I disagree 
with the reasoning of the thought experiment, I am saying that I see a 
mistake in the initial assumptions which invalidate the thought experiment 
in the first place.
 


  I don't assume that at all. I suspect the opposite case, that in 
  fact any level of personal consciousness - be it sub-personal-reflex, 
  personal-intentional, or super-signifying-synchronistic cannot be 
 modeled by 
  the impersonal views from third person perspectives. The impersonal 
 (micro, 
  meso, macrocosm) is based on public extension, space, and quantifiable 
  lengths, while the personal is based on private intention, time, and 
  qualitative oscillation. Each layer of the personal relates to all of 
 the 
  impersonal layers in a different way, so that you can't necessarily 
 replace 
  a person with a sculpture and expect there to still be a person there - 
 even 
  if the sculpture seems extremely convincing to us from the outside 
  appearance. My prediction is that rather than fading qualia, we would 
 simply 
  see increasing pathology, psychosis, dementia, coma, and death. 

 But since you misunderstand the first assumption you misunderstand the 
 whole argument. 


Nope. You misunderstand my argument completely.

Craig
 



 -- 
 Stathis Papaioannou 


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Re: Continuous Game of Life